In an elegant apartment which luxury and wealth had adorned with
everything that the fantastic industry of our times affords, two
stately figures were pacing rapidly up and down: a lady no longer young
but still magnificently beautiful, a true Parisienne and _lionne_ of
society, and a young man with an aristocratic, though somewhat stern,
bearing, dark hair, and strongly marked features. At times they eagerly
approached each other with flashing eyes, then turned away to resume
their restless pacing to and fro.
"It is useless, we must part!" cried the youth, after a pause. "My
passion for you is destroying my whole life: my studies are neglected,
nothing has any charm for me unless connected with you; my fancy is
unceasingly busied with your image. I can no longer work, no longer
think, no longer create anything, and unless I can break loose from
this conflict I shall become a dishonored wretch, or consume my
strength in endless torture and go to destruction! We must part
forever!"
There was no answer. The lady had thrown herself upon a causeuse which
stood just under a niche overgrown with ivy and lighted with lamps that
gleamed through crimson shades, and was gazing steadily into the soft
gloom, while a tear rolled slowly down her cheek. Our hero turned,
after vainly waiting for a reply, and looked ardently at the beautiful
picture.
The deepest silence pervaded the elegant apartment, only interrupted by
the low plashing of a tiny fountain which fell into a marble basin
filled with goldfish. Countless hyacinths exhaled their fragrance amid
tall exotic plants, and between the heavy silken curtains and portieres
gleamed marble statues, which in the dim purple light seemed instinct
with life. Everything breathed love and secret bliss. Allured by some
magnetic attraction our hero knelt before the silent figure, and
kissing the hand that hung by her side, whispered: "Great Heaven, if
you weep how shall I find strength to conquer this moment? Oh, do not
condemn me to suffer all the torments which only a fiend can devise for
feeble human beings! If you have a heart that can weep, in mercy soften
this farewell. If you really loved me, you would not by every alluring
art seek to place me in a relation where your better self must renounce
and despise me."
"What do I desire?" was the reply. "I wish to keep you, you who are the
sole happiness of my life. I will not, cannot, see you leave me so
coldly, cannot loose you from these arms, which in your person hold my
very life. What will my husband lose if through you he receives what he
does not know how to win himself: a happy wife? what will he lose if
the smile I _feign_ for him becomes _real_? What has he made me? A doll
to amuse society, a puppet to minister to his empty vanity. What does
he lose if the doll receives life? He has never asked for my heart,--do
I rob him if I give that which he neither knows nor prizes to another
who longs for it, and whom it can make happy?" She paused and pressed a
light kiss on the listening ear of her friend. Bewildered by her
musical whisper and warm breath, he leaned his burning cheek upon her
breast and could find no reply.
She clasped him in a closer embrace and continued, in a tone of
reproachful tenderness, "Now that our relation must be decided, you are
so stern, so coldly conscientious, and yet--who woke this love in my
frozen heart? Who implored me to prolong my stay in Germany? Who
increased my passion by a thousand sweet nothings? Was it not you, who
now reject me?"
"Alas! my wretched frivolity, it punishes me heavily," he murmured,
with a deep sigh; "but as it has brought me to this pass, it shall at
least lead me no further."
He tried to rise, but she still clung to him. "Do you no longer love
me?" she cried, bursting into tears.
"Yes, my heart is glowing with love for you!" he exclaimed, clasping
her in his arms. "But shall I become unprincipled because I have been
thoughtless? Because I have taken peace from your heart, shall I rob
you of a quiet conscience? Because ennui and ignoble desires have led
me to form an unworthy friendship with D'Anneaud, your mindless,
heartless husband, shall I now become traitor to his honor and my own?"
"Go, then," murmured the beautiful woman, removing her arms,--"go, if
you have the strength to do so."
"You give me the power yourself, for you do not understand me. The more
firmly you cling to me, the more surely my nobler being finds the
strength to escape you. I am aware that I have two natures within me:
one longs for you, but the other turns resolutely away, and at this
moment solemnizes its greatest, most agonizing victory, since it
compels me to resign you. Yes, its most _agonizing_ victory," he
repeated, clasping the angry woman to his heart with passionate love.
"You weep, but my very heart is bleeding, beautiful, lovely woman; no
tongue can express what I suffer."
For a moment they stood with their lips clinging together; at last with
a violent effort he tore himself from her embrace and rushed out of the
room without another word.
"Henri!" she cried, faintly.
In vain: Henri ran down the staircase, sprang into his carriage, and
shouted to the coachman, "To Ottmarsfeld!"
Ottmarsfeld, Heinrich von Ottmar's family estate, where he lived alone
with his servants, was a two hours' drive from the capital. While
within the limits of the city Heinrich looked incessantly back towards
the tempting house, but when the carriage rolled through the gate he
wrapped himself in his cloak and sank into a profound reverie.
The keen night air blew sharply upon him, and he shrank back into one
corner of the carriage with a shiver. The trees along the highway
towered stiff and bare in the darkness. Now and then one of the horses
shied at the sight of some strange shadow. A muttered oath and the
crack of the whip followed, then all was silent again except the
regular beat of the hoofs as the horses trotted forward. _Heinrich's_
heated fancy compared this cold, ghostly drive with the hour he had
spent in the elegant perfumed boudoir, by the side of the fair,
frivolous Parisienne. He closed his eyes to shut out the surrounding
gloom, and conjured up the statues, flowers, and the moment when the
graceful, weeping woman reclined before him on the silken causeuse.
"I am a fool," he said to himself; "to what phantom am I sacrificing
myself? What object, what reward, can I hope for in return for my
superhuman self-denial? None, save curses from the lips which offered
me blissful happiness, and tears of sorrow in my own eyes. Yes, she was
right. Who will lose anything if we are happy? Shall the fairest hours
of my youth pass away in consuming, unsatisfied longing?--shall I allow
my studies to suffer from this secret struggle, and draw upon myself
the disgrace of failing in the examination? Are all these things
outweighed by the imaginary duty imposed upon me by the title of
friend, with which I have honored her fool of a husband, and whose
violation he will notice as little as the most conscientious
fulfillment of it? Will they be outweighed by the preservation of one's
self-respect, and is not this, after all, a matter of opinion?--is it
not a sort of coquetting with one's self? What will all my self-esteem
avail, if the world calls me a simpleton because, under the ban of my
passion, I neglected my studies and social interests? If I am pointed
at as an incapable man, shall I not sink in my own eyes?" His blood
grew more and more fevered as his reason coldly analyzed what a short
time before had seemed to him an inviolable duty. The moral stand which
he had taken in his conversation with Madame d'Anneaud was not
sufficiently powerful to protect, him from the relapse which had now
come. "I shall never rest," he thought, "until the beautiful woman is
_mine_, then only I shall be myself again! My father always said that
we could find no better way of defending ourselves against the power a
woman obtains over our hearts than by degrading her. How the cold,
shrewd man of the world would laugh if he were alive, and could see how
I am toiling to keep this woman in a position from which she herself
wishes to descend!--if he could see how my love hallows one who does
not desire to be held sacred! And her husband! Well, if he discovers it
I would give him satisfaction by a few ounces of blood, and none of my
acquaintances would despise me for the scandal half as much as I might
perhaps despise myself."
He drew out his watch: he would turn back if there was still time. It
was too late: it was already past the hour when he could see Madame
d'Anneaud alone. He clinched his teeth and hid his face in his cloak,
as if shivering from a feverish chill. The carriage entered a thick
wood, and at last stopped before a large iron gate.
"You are ill, Herr Baron," said the old valet de chambre as Heinrich
entered the castle, trembling violently.
"Yes, yes, I feel very ill," he replied, passing an to his
sleeping-room to wait with burning impatience for the following day,
which would afford him an opportunity to atone for his previous reserve
in the arms of the beautiful Madame d'Anneaud. But the next morning
brought a farewell letter from the lovely Parisienne, who informed him
that she should return at once to her home in France. It was written
with all the pride and anger of a woman who has experienced the deepest
possible humiliation; who, having offered more than was desired or
accepted, now wishes to make amends for her too great willingness to
yield by a double measure of coldness and harshness. The youth of
twenty was still too great a novice in a woman's words to perceive that
this cold reserve had as little real foundation as the pride from which
it sprung, and which with such ladies too often supplies the place of
true honor. Heinrich was hopelessly crushed, and as everything that is
denied us doubly excites our desires, the indignant woman who had cast
him off was far more charming in his eyes than when she had pleaded for
his love. Remorse and passion strove in his heart with all the fury of
the hot blood of twenty. It was the first connection of such a nature
that Heinrich had ever formed, the first great feeling of his life.
Such periods, with their secret resolutions, are those in which the
elements of the inner life are analyzed, separated from each other, or
harmoniously blended. They are the standard for the guidance of the
whole life.
Heinrich von Ottmar had been educated entirely without love. His
mother died before he reached his fifth year; his father, a heartless
aristocrat, was Grand Steward of the Court of the Principality of
H----, where Heinrich was now to commence his career, and all the
efforts of the haughty, ambitious noble were directed solely to the one
object of inoculating his son with the ideas which, as he believed, had
made him great, and might prepare a similar destiny for Heinrich. He
was one of those tyrannical persons who make even those they wish to
benefit unhappy, because they take no account of individuality, and
compel the victim of their anxiety to be happy, not in _his own_, but
_their_ way. He brought only discord into _Heinrich's_ young soul,
which was already sympathetically attracted by the development of the
times, for while he succeeded on one hand in rousing and directing it
entirely towards one object,--that of obtaining power and position on
the loftiest heights of society,--he could not suppress his leaning
towards the struggles for freedom peculiar to the times, which were an
abomination to the man whose inclinations tended towards
ultramontanism. Here also, influenced by the illusion that everything
could be done by force, there were many violent scenes, in which he
threatened the young defenseless boy with expulsion from his home, a
father's curse, and disinheritance. But no opinions are changed, no
convictions uprooted, by menaces and blows; they are at most forced to
conceal themselves where it is impossible to struggle with them.
Heinrich accustomed himself _to be silent_ and to _dissimulate_ at an
age when he was incapable of understanding the moral wrong and evil of
these qualities. Thus, under this father's tyrannical sway, every
budding germ of manly truth was suffocated, and shot forth
unavailingly. There are two results from such a course of training.
When the parental authority asserts itself also in the petty details
and interests of life, a most independent and rugged character is often
developed, firmly determined to exchange a hated, tyrannical present
for a free future, however dark it may be. This was not the case with
Heinrich von Ottmar; on the contrary, his worldly-wise father allowed
him full liberty in all the trifles on which youth sets so high a
value,--greater liberty than a more conscientious man would have done.
He knew how to make his home-life pleasant enough to him, induce him to
fear expulsion from it as the greatest misfortune; thus he always
retained his influence, and the youth, spoiled by the glitter and
pleasures of life, bore the intellectual tyranny of his father because
it allowed the most unlimited personal freedom, and learned to yield
and submit. He was naturally generous and warmhearted, capable of
enthusiasm for everything good and beautiful; but under these
circumstances only his intellectual, not his moral, powers could
develop, and his affections were forced to pine for the lack of food.
But his hot blood asserted its rights, and as it found in his soul no
lofty ideal against which its strong, youthful waves might dash, it
lost itself in the broad, shallow stream of sensuality. His father held
the opinion that there could be nothing more disadvantageous, more
injurious to the thinker, as well as to the man of the world, than a
deep feeling; and as he desired to make his son both, if possible, he
wished to save him from the evil. He also knew that there is no better
protection from it than the habit of frivolous, careless intercourse
with insignificant natures, and therefore cheerfully endured this phase
of _Heinrich's_ character. He had no esteem for women himself, and it
seemed to him a matter of indifference if the impulsive youth turned
where favors were granted most speedily, and where he unconsciously
lost his reverence for the sex. Thus the blinded father, with his
inexorable sternness on the one side, converted a noble, many-sided
nature into an ambiguous, varying character, and, by his unprincipled
indulgence on the other hand, transformed a heart-craving love into a
disposition of unbridled license; and when, in _Heinrich's_ nineteenth
year, he closed his eyes, he left his son entangled in a confusion of
inextricable contradictions, with an incomprehensible impulse towards
goodness and beauty in his breast, and without any compass to enable
him to obtain them, _desiring_ the right with the yet undestroyed power
of a noble nature, but defrauded of the power of _doing_ it; in spite
of his father's influence a philanthropist, and through it an egotist.
Thus he was a mystery to himself, whose solution he expected to find in
life, not suspecting with what sacrifice he should be compelled to
purchase it. Tortured by this secret conflict, he sought refuge and
support in science, and devoted himself to the study of political law.
He was too deeply imbued with the spirit of the times to find
satisfaction for his ambition solely in the prerogatives of the
nobility and a mere court office. True, he desired a position near the
throne, but it must be one which should have some political importance,
and deal not only with the organization of the court, but of the state.
This was the highest aim which appeared before him, and he labored with
honest zeal to reach it. Then he made the acquaintance of Madame
d'Anneaud, who was visiting a married relative in H----. She was the
first highly cultured woman he had ever known, and the impression made
by her beauty, united to the polished manners and dainty coquetry of an
aristocratic Parisienne, exerted an intoxicating influence over the
mind and imagination of the young man. Her sudden departure inflamed
his passion to the highest pitch; but in order to approach the
beautiful woman he had formed a friendship with her husband, and the
very bond which had brought the lovers together now formed a wall of
separation between them. To mislead the wife of a confiding,
unsuspicious friend was an act of dishonor from which his skeptical
reason recoiled. In this conflict month after month elapsed in
idleness. It was the year in which he was preparing for his
examination; he felt that he should fail if he did not conquer his
inertness and return to his studies. He had been too long accustomed to
receive all the favors of love to be able to endure a hopeless wish and
longing for any length of time. He must either possess Madame d'Anneaud
or avoid her. He had chosen the latter ere he knew how difficult it
would be to deny himself anything he ardently desired. He wished to do
right; but when he felt the bitterness of such self-denial his strength
to carry out the impulse failed, for he was already far too great an
egotist to make any sacrifice, and without sacrifice there is no
virtue.
Thus his first victory over himself was transformed into a defeat when
Madame d'Anneaud's implacable letter robbed him of the ground on which
he expected to enjoy with her the fruits of a shameful peace. Now, as
he fancied, he had lost all, committed a wrong both against his beloved
and himself, for which he must strive to atone with all the energy of
passion. He drove into the city to see Madame d'Anneaud, but she
refused to admit him. He wrote a despairing note and sent it to her by
a confidential waiting-maid, but it was returned with the seal
unbroken.
He spent three days in the most terrible excitement. The blood coursed
madly through his veins; his brain burned and whirled with plans to
regain the lost one and prevent her return to Paris. On the third
Monsieur d'Anneaud called to bid him farewell, complaining bitterly of
the caprices of his wife, who had suddenly dismissed her whole
household, would see no one, and wished to set off at once for Paris.
Everything around him grew dim as he heard these words; his heart
throbbed as if it would burst, and when his friend had taken leave he
turned deadly pale and sank exhausted upon the sofa. Now for the first
time he felt what, in the suspense of the last few days, he had not
heeded, that he was ill; but he dared not yield to it. Madame d'Anneaud
was to set out that very evening. The thought drove him back to the
city, that he might at least watch her window and witness her
departure. She saw him, and as she entered her carriage cast a long
and, as it appeared to him, sorrowful glance at him.
He returned to the castle wild with despair. What was he to do now,
follow her, perhaps to be again repulsed? sacrifice his scientific
studies at the decisive time of the examination to rush around Paris
imploring love, perchance in vain? It seemed too useless and degrading
for him to resolve upon it without further reflection. He strove with
superhuman exertion to busy himself in his work; in vain, his thoughts
refused to obey his will. Day and night he sat over his books, gazing
with burning eyes and bewildered brain at the letters, to him so
unmeaning and disconnected, while the maddest longing raged in his
panting breast. In this torturing, mental struggle his bodily health
failed more and more; the illness which he had felt ever since his
first great emotion made itself the more apparent the less he spared
himself. At last he yielded, and became the prey of a most violent
feverish attack. The physician who was summoned shrugged his shoulders
thoughtfully, for the young man's condition afforded every symptom that
nervous fever was to be apprehended.