follow her beloved. Nevertheless she lived on for three years, during
which she never laid aside her widow's garb, and was never seen
in any public or festive place. In her retirement, however, she was
industrious at her work, for she had vowed to the chapel of the Madonna
degli Angeli, a large banner on which was represented the archangel
Michael, clad in white armour, and slaying the dragon. And it was
reported that the angel's coat of mail was worked with her own silver
hair. And this banner was placed next to the first which hung in the
chapel over Attilio's grave. This task completed, she held out no
longer; they bore the embroideress too to her rest, and granted her her
last petition, to be buried at the feet of him she loved. And that
grave was long the resort of inhabitants and strangers, who went to
admire the exquisite work of both banners, and to relate to each other
the story of Gianna the Fair, who in life and death gave to her beloved
all she possessed--even to her honour--though she might easily have
preserved it unblemished had she held her peace."
When the reader had ended, there was on interval of silence in the
saloon, and the rain, the pattering of which had formed a melancholy
accompaniment to the whole of the narrative, was now the only sound
heard.
At last the young doctor at the chess-table observed: "This story has
somewhat of the gold tone of the Venetian school. And this the palettes
of our moderns call no longer produce. Yet I own it seemed to me as if
the copyist had introduced here and there some bold touches of his
own."
"The copyist!" said he of the sofa, throwing away his cigar. "This
shews you know little of Erminus. He has only been taking us in, in
order to contrast a highly coloured picture with our faded hues. Who
will bet that this chronicle of San Niccolo is not a much later
production than the far-famed Ossian of Macpherson!"
Erminus seemed to turn a deaf ear to these remarks. "And how do you
estimate the morality of the story?" asked he, addressing himself to
Frau Eugenie.
The lady in question reflected for a moment, then said, "I do not know
that one could discuss so singular a case in the light of precedent or
example. Have not different times indeed different manners, and
different modes of feeling? I confess that a passionate self-surrender
which does not reckon upon eternal constancy, must always clash with my
own sense of right; and that it is only the tragic end that reconciles
me to the startling commencement. And yet, had the Fair Giovanna been
my sister, I should not have scrupled to walk with her hand in hand in
the funeral procession that followed Attilio's bier."
"A better testimony to the morality of the tale I could not desire,"
replied the narrator. "Allow me to kiss your hand in return."
END OF THE EMBROIDERESS OF TREVISO.
LOTTKA.
LOTTKA.
I was not quite seventeen years old, an over-grown pale-faced young
fellow, at that awkward and embarrassing age which, conscious, of
having out-grown boyish ways, is yet very unsteady and insecure when
seeking to tread in the footsteps of men. With an audacious fancy and a
timid heart; oscillating between defiant self-confidence and girlish
sensitiveness; snatching inquisitively at every veil that hides from
mortal eyes the mysteries of human life; to-day knowing the last word
of the last question, to-morrow confessing the alphabet has still to be
learnt, and getting comfort after so restless and contradictory a
fashion that one would have been intolerable to one's very self if not
surrounded by fellows in misfortune---that is in years--who were faring
no better, and yet continued to endure their personality.
It was at this time that I became intimate with a singular fellow who
was some two years older than I, but like myself doomed to spend nearly
another year as upper-class student. He did not attend the same
gymnasium, nor were his relations, who lived out of Berlin, at all
known to mine. I am really puzzled how to explain the fact that in
spite of these obstacles we two became so friendly, that scarcely a day
passed without his coming up the steep stairs that led to my rooms.
Indeed even then a third party seeing us together might have found it
hard to say what made us so essential to each other. He was in the
habit of entering with a mere nod, walking up and down the room, now
and then opening a book, or looking at a picture on the walls, and
finally throwing himself into my grandfather's armchair--my substitute
for a sofa--where, legs crossed, he would sit for hours, speaking not a
word, until I had finished my Latin essay. Often when I looked up from
the book before me I met his quiet, dreamy, brown eyes resting on me
with a gentle brotherly expression, which made me nod to him in return;
and it was a pleasure to me just to feel him there. If he chanced to
find me idle, or in a communicative mood, he would let me run on by the
hour without interruption, and his silent attention seemed to encourage
and comfort me. It was only when we got upon the subject of music that
he ever grew excited, and then we both lost ourselves in passionate
debate. He had a splendid deep bass voice, that harmonized well with
his manly aspect, dark eyes, and brown satin-smooth skin. And as he was
also zealously studying the theory of music, it was easy for him to get
the better of my superficial lay-talk by weighty arguments; yet
whenever he thus drove me into a corner he always seemed pained at my
defeat. I remember him, on one occasion, ringing me out of bed,
formally to apologise for having, in the ardour of controversy, spoken
of Rossini's _Barbiere_ which I had been strenuously upholding, as a
wretched shaver whose melodies, compared with those of Mozart, were of
little more account than the soap-bubbles in his barber's basin.
In addition too to the extreme placidity that characterized him, he was
always ready to do me a number of small services, such as the younger
student usually renders to his senior, and there were two other things
that helped to rivet our friendship: he had initiated me in the art of
smoking, and set my first songs to music. There was one, I remember,
which appeared to us at that time peculiarly felicitous both as to
words and melody, and we used to sing it as a duet in all our walks
together--
"I think in the olden days
That a maiden was loved by me;
But my heart is sick and troubled,
It is all a dream may-be.
"I think in the olden days,
One was basking in sunny bliss;
But whether I or another?
I cannot be sure of this!
"I think in the olden days
That I sang--but know not what;
For I have forgotten all things
Since I've been by her forgot."
Dear and ridiculous season of youth! A poet of sixteen sings of the
"old myth" of his lost love-sorrow, and a musician of eighteen with all
possible gravity, sets the sobbing strophes to music with a piano-forte
accompaniment that seems to foreshadow the outburst of the world's
denunciation on the head of the inconstant fair!
We were, however, as I have already said, so especially pleased with
this melancholy progeny of our united talents, that we were not long
content to keep it to ourselves; we burned with desire to send it forth
to the public. At that time the "Dresden Evening Times" under the
editorship of, as I believe the late Robert Schneider, admitted poems
over which my critical self-esteem could not but shrug its shoulders.
To him, therefore, we sent our favourite--anonymously, of course--in
the full persuasion that it would appear in the forthcoming number,
text and music both, with the request that the unknown contributor
would delight the Evening Times with other admirable fruits of genius.
Full of a sweet shyness, spite of our incognito, we accordingly took to
haunting the eating-houses where that journal was taken in, and
blushingly looked out for our first-born. But week after week passed by
without satisfying our expectations. I myself after twice writing and
dignifiedly desiring the manuscript to be returned, gave up all hope,
and was so wounded and humiliated by this failure, as first to throw
down the gauntlet to an ungrateful contemporaneous world, and
contribute to the pleasure of more enlightened posterity in the form of
a longer poem; and then gradually to shun all mention of our unlucky
venture, even requesting Bastel (my friend's name being Sebastian) to
leave off humming the tune which too vividly recalled to me the
mortifying history.
He humoured me on this point, but he could not refrain from privately
carrying on his investigations in pastry-cooks' shops, the more that he
was devotedly addicted to cakes and sweet things. It was then
midsummer, and the small round cherry tarts were wonderfully refreshing
to an upper class student's tongue, parched and dry with Latin and
Greek. Bastel most seriously asserted that sweets agreed with his
voice; he was only able to temper the harshness of his bass notes by
plenty of sugar and fruit-juice. I on the contrary, despised such
insipid dainties, and preferred to stick to wine, which at that time
did very little indeed to clear up any mind I had. But in virtue of my
calling I was bound to worship "wine, women, and song," and in the
volume of poems at which I was working hard, there was, of course, to
be no lack of drinking-songs.
We had now reached July, and the dog-days were beginning, when one
afternoon Bastel made his appearance at the usual hour, but in very
unusual mood. He lit his cigar indeed, but instead of sitting down to
smoke it, he stood motionless at the window for a full quarter of an
hour, drumming "_Non piu andrai_" on the panes, and from time to time
sighing as though a hundredweight lay on his heart.
"Bastel," said I, "what's wrong?"
No answer.
"Are you ill?" I went on; "or have you had another row with the
ordinary? or did the college yesterday give you a bad reception?" (He
belonged to a certain secret society much frequented by students, and
wore in his waistcoat pocket a tricoloured watch-ribbon which only
ventured forth at their solemn meetings.)
Still the same silence on the part of the strange dreamer, and the
drumming grew so vehement that the panes began to ring ominously.
It was only when I left off noticing him, that he incoherently began to
talk to himself, "There are more things in heaven and earth--" but
further he did not carry the quotation.
At last I jumped up, went to him, and caught hold of his hand.
"Bastel!" I cried, "what does this fooling mean? Something or other is
vexing you. Tell it out, and let us see what can be done, but at least
spare my window-panes and behave rationally. Will you light another
cigar?"
He shook his head. "If you have time," said he, "let's go out, I may be
able to tell you in the open air. This room is so close."
We went down stairs and wandered arm-in-arm through quiet Behren
Street, where my parents lived, into Frederick Street. When he got into
the full tide of carriages and foot-passengers, he seemed to be in a
measure relieved. He pressed my arm, stood still a moment, and broke
out: "It is nothing very particular, Paul, but I believe that I am in
love, and this time for life."
I was far from laughing at the declaration. At the age of sixteen one
believes in the endless duration of every feeling. But I had read
my Heine and considered it bad taste to become sentimental over a
love-affair.
"Who is the fortunate fair?" I lightly enquired.
"You shall see her," he replied, his eyes wandering absently over the
crowd flowing through the street. "I will take you there at once if you
are inclined."
"Can one go thus unceremoniously without being better dressed? I have
actually forgotten my gloves."
"She is no countess," said he, a slight blush shewing through his dark
complexion. "Just think! yesterday when I wanted to look once more
through the Evening Times--yes, I know we are not to speak of it, but
it has to do with the whole thing--chance, or my good star led me to a
quite out-of-the-way little cake-shop, and there--"
He stopped short.
"There you found her eating cherry-tarts, and that won your affection,"
laughed I. "Well, Bastel, I congratulate you. Sweets to the sweet. But
have you already made such way as to be able to calculate upon finding
her again at the very same place?"
He gave no further reply. My tone seemed to be discordant with his
mood. So indeed it at once became with my own, but my principles did
not allow me to express myself more feelingly. Minor chords remained
the exclusive property of verse; conversation was to be carried on in a
harsh and flippant key, the more coldblooded and ironical the better.
We had walked, in silence for the most part, all the length of
Frederick Street to the Halle Gate, I, for all my air of indifference,
actually consumed with curiosity and sympathy, when my friend suddenly
turned up one of the last side streets that debouch into the main
artery of the great city. Here were found at the time I am speaking of,
several small one-storied private houses of mean exterior, a few shops,
little traffic, so that the rattling of cab wheels sufficed to bring
the inhabitants to their windows; and numbers of children who played
about freely in the street, not having to take flight before the
approach of any heavily-laden omnibus. When almost at the end of this
particular side-street we came to a halt before a small house painted
green, and having above its glass-door a large and dusty black board
with the word "Confectionery" in tarnished gilt letters. To the right
and left of this door were windows, with old brown blinds closely
drawn, although the house was not on the sunny side of the street. I
can see the landscape on those blinds to this hour! A ruined temple
near a pond, on which a man with effaced features sat in a boat
angling, while a peacock spread his tail on the stump of a willow tree.
The glass door in the middle looked as though it had not been cleaned
for ten years, and its netted curtain, white once no doubt, was now by
reason of age, dust, and flies, pretty much the colour of the blinds.
I was startled when Sebastian prepared to enter this un-inviting
domicile: however I took care not to ruffle him again, and followed his
lead in no small excitement.
We were greeted by a hot cloying smell, which under ordinary
circumstances would instantly have driven me out again, a smell of old
dough, and fermenting strawberries, mingled with a flavour of chocolate
and Vanilla, a smell that only an inveterate sweet-tooth or a youth in
love could by possibility have consented to inhale! Added to this, the
room was not much more than six feet high, and apparently never
ventilated, except by the chance opening of the door. How my friend
could ever have expected to find the Dresden Evening Times in such an
out-of-the-way shop as this was a puzzle to me. Very soon, however, I
discovered what it was that had lured him again--spite of his
disappointment--into this distressing atmosphere. Behind the small
counter on which was displayed a limited selection of uninviting tarts
and cakes, I could see in the dusky window-seat behind the brown blind,
a young girl dressed in the simplest printed cotton gown possible, her
thick black hair just parted and cut short behind, a piece of knitting
in her hands, which she only laid down when after some delay and
uncertainty we had determined upon the inevitable cherry-tarts. My
friend who hardly dared to look at her, still less to speak, went into
the narrow, dark, and most comfortless little inner room, where the
"Vossische Journal," and the "Observer on the Spree" outspread on a
round table before the faded sofa, kept up a faint semblance of a
reading-room. A small fly-blinded mirror hung on the wall between the
two wooden-framed lithographs of King Frederick William III. and Queen
Louise, over which was a bronzed bust of old Bluecher squeezed in
between the top of the stove and the low ceiling and looking gruffly
down.
Sebastian had thrown himself in feverish haste into one corner of the
sofa, I into the other, when the young girl came in with the small
plates for the tarts. I was now able to look at her leisurely, for she
waited to light a gas-burner, it being already too dark to read. She
was rather short than tall, but her figure was so symmetrical, so
round, yet slender, that the eye followed her every movement with
rapture, spite of her unbecoming, and almost ugly dress. Her feet,
which were made visible to us by her standing on tip-toe to reach the
gas burner, were daintily small as those of a child of ten, her little
deft snow-white fingers looked as if they had always rested on a silken
lap. What white things she had on, a small upright collar, cuffs, and a
waitress's apron, were so immaculately clean as to form a striking
contrast with the stained carpet, dusty furniture, and traces of the
flies of a hundred summers visible on all around.
I ought, I am aware, to attempt some sketch of her face, but I despair
beforehand. Not that her features were so incomparably beautiful as to
defy the skill of any and every artist. But what gave the peculiar
charm to this face of hers, was a certain spirituality which I found it
no easy matter to define to myself, a calm melancholy, a half-shy,
half-threatening expression, a springtide bloom, which, having suddenly
felt the touch of frost, no longer promised a joyous fruitful summer;
in short, a face that would have puzzled and perplexed more mature
decipherers of character, and which could not fail to make an
irresistible impression upon a dreamer of sixteen.
"What is your name, Fraeulein, if I may venture to ask?" said I, by way
of opening the conversation, my friend seeming as though he had no more
important object than the mere consuming of tartlets.
"Lottka," replied the girl without looking at me, and already preparing
to leave the room.
"Lottka!" cried I. "How do you come to have this Polish name?"
"My father was a Pole."
And then she was back again in the shop.
"Would you have the kindness, Miss Lottka, to bring me a glass of
_bishop_." I called after her.
"Directly," was her reply.
Sebastian was studying the advertisements in the "Vossische Journal" as
though he expected to meet with the real finder of his lost heart
there! I turned over the "Observer." Not one word did we exchange.
In three minutes in she came again, bringing a glass of dark red wine
on a tray. I could not turn my eyes away from her white hands, and felt
my heart beat while gathering courage to address her again.
"Will you not sit a little with us, Fraeulein?" said I. "Do take my
place on the sofa, and I will get a chair."
"Thank you, sir," she replied, without any primness, but at the same
time with almost insulting indifference, "my place is in the shop. If
there is anything I can do for you--"
"Do remain where you are," I insisted, venturing to catch hold of one
of her hands which felt cool and smooth, and instantly slipped out of
my grasp. "These newspapers are horribly dull. Allow us to introduce
ourselves. My friend here, Mr. ----"
At that moment the shop-door opened, a little girl pushed shyly in,
with two copper coins in her small fist, for which she wanted some
sweeties. Our beauty availed herself of this opportunity of declining
our acquaintance, and after having served the child, sat down again in
her window-corner and took up her knitting.
Our position grew more and more unbearable. As to the tarts they were
eaten long ago, and I had, partly out of embarrassment, and partly to
give myself the air of an experienced wine-bibber, tossed off my glass
of bishop at a draught, and now sat with burning brow and wandering
mind, looking at the flies crawling along the glass's edge, and
intoxicating themselves with the crimson drops. Sebastian was as silent
as an Indian Fakir, and seemed to be listening intently to what was
going on in the shop, where indeed there was not a sound to be heard,
except now and then the click of the knitting-needles against the
counter.
"Come, you trappist," said I at length, "we will pay our bill and get
some fresh air. My lungs are as it were candied. For any one but a fly
this atmosphere is insupportable."
"Good-bye, pretty child," said I at the counter with all the importance
of a roue of sixteen, who has a volume of lyrical poems at home written
in the style of Heine, and ready for the press. "I hope that we may
improve our acquaintance at some future time when you are less
absorbed. Au revoir!"
I should no doubt have indulged in greater absurdities, but that she
looked at me with so strangely absent an expression that I suddenly
felt ashamed of my impertinence, made her a low bow, and hurried out
into the street. Sebastian followed me instantly; he had hardly dared
to look at her.
"Now then," he said, as we rushed along through the silent street,
"what do you say?"
"That the bishop is very fair, but the tarts execrable. I cannot
understand how you forced your portion down as well as half of mine. I
suspect that confectioner's shop of only selling old cakes bought
second-hand."
"What of that?" growled he. "I did not ask about such things. I want to
know what you think of _her_."
"My good friend," I returned in an authoritative and fatherly tone.
"What can one say about a girl who is able to breathe in that
atmosphere! Woman is ever an enigma as you well know."
(He nodded assent and sighed; I had contrived--God knows how--to pass
with him as a great discerner of feminine spirits, and was fond of
introducing into my generalisations the word "Woman," which has always
a mystical charm for youths of our age.)
"This monosyllabic creature--that she is enchanting it is impossible to
deny! But I warn you against her, Bastel. Believe me, she has no
heart."
"You think so?" he interpolated in a horrified tone without looking at
me.
"That is to say she has either never had one, or destiny has changed it
into stone in her breast. Otherwise would she so coldly have turned
away when I addressed her? She has a past I tell you, perhaps a present
also, but no future."
This stupendous sentence of mine thrown off in mere thoughtlessness
produced an unexpected effect upon my chum. He started as though a
snake had bitten him, snatched his arm out of mine and said--
"You think then that she--that she no longer--in a word you doubt her
virtue?"
I saw now the mischief I had done. "Be easy, child," said I, throwing
my arm over his shoulder. "Come, we must not have a scene here. We have
agreed woman is an enigma. But as to character I have no grounds for
suspecting hers. I only meant to say, take care that you do not get
involved in an unpromising affair. For she looks like one from whom a
victim would not easily escape! If you like I will keep an eye upon
her, and I promise to render you every assistance that one friend can
to another."
We had now reached a dark and deserted street-corner. Suddenly he
embraced me, squeezed my hand as though bent on fusing it with his own,
and instantly vanished up the nearest side-street.
I for my part walked home very slowly in order to grow cool and
collected, but the singular form I had seen never left me for a moment.
I was so feverishly abstracted at the home tea-table that my good
mother grew alarmed, and sent me early to bed. When I went to my class
the following morning, I found I had not prepared my Plato, and was
obliged to put up with many mocking remarks from the lecturer on
history in consequence of my having pushed the date of the battle of
Cannae a good century too far back. The day was wet, and I lounged down
the street full of depression and _ennui_. Sebastian kept himself out
of sight. I stood an hour at the window on which he had drummed "_Non
piu andrai_" the day before, and looked meditatively at the rain-pools
in the street below, out of which the sparrows were picking a few
oat-husks. I heard the horses stamping in the stable, and the
stable-boy whistling Weber's "Jungfern Kranz" and found myself suddenly
whistling it too, and stamping the while. I felt so absurd and pitiable
that tears nearly came. At length I armed myself with an umbrella, and
ran out into the wet and windy street.