there were very kind to me in their own way after my father's death, but
I was ungrateful, and mistook their meaning. I left the place after my
mother died. I can still remember the dismal, misty autumn morning when
I ran away as distinctly as if it were yesterday. I had no money, but
Jews are always kind and charitable to the poor. I traveled through
Galicia and Poland, remaining sometimes for a few weeks with a rabbi,
who was good enough to take me as a pupil; but none of the teaching I
received entirely satisfied me. I went on farther. In course of time I
reached Wilna, where Rabbi Naphtali, the celebrated Cabalist, has a
school. Under his guidance I learned to know the 'Cabala'--that strange,
deep, mysterious book, containing the profoundest wisdom and religious
teaching of our people. I threw myself into its study with the utmost
enthusiasm. That was my misfortune, if you like to call it so. I went
through that time of doubt when all dogmatic religion appears to be
glaringly false--a time which no young man who thinks at all about these
subjects can fail to pass through, and during which he boldly and
determinately endeavors to grasp the inconceivable.
"My knowledge appeared small and narrow. I strove to make it both wider
and higher. The German people, with their great poets and thinkers, were
irresistibly attractive to me. I studied their language carefully; and
by dint of teaching, and exercising an economy that was almost miserly,
I at last succeeded in making enough money to go to Germany. I set out
at a most fortunate moment for myself, for it chanced that I made the
acquaintance of old Prince Sugatscheff at a small town on the borders of
Lithuania. He was of the truest nobility: he was a noble-minded man.
Prince Alexius, whom you met at Baden-Baden, was his son, Frau Graefin."
"I remember," she answered, in a low voice.
"Well," he continued, "the young Polish Jew, who knew Lessing, and
delighted in Schiller's poetry, awakened his sympathy. He gave me the
means of studying. The ancient world was now revealed to me in the books
to which I had access at college. I saw it in all its cheerful
light-heartedness, and also in its thoughtfulness and depth. But that
was not the kind of knowledge for which I thirsted. I then made natural
science my principal study. My researches were all confined to the realm
of matter. At length the need of leading a practically active life grew
more and more apparent to me. The fire of youth had begun to smolder; I
gave up trying to raise the veil of Isis, and endeavoring to discover
the reason of every natural phenomenon. I became a doctor, and I can now
say that I made a reputation for skill in my profession. I had changed
my name. David Blum would have had many stumbling-blocks and
disagreeables in his path that Friedrich Reimann was spared. I did not
change my religion with my name--from habit, if you like--for I was
indifferent to every form of dogmatic religion.
"My practice increased, and I became one of the first physicians in the
northern seaport town where I had settled. Then old Prince Sugatscheff
was taken ill in Paris, and sent for me. It was his last illness. Before
his death, he entreated me to be a faithful friend to his young son, and
to accompany him everywhere as his private physician until I thought him
capable of taking care of himself, and of withstanding the temptations
of the great world. I gave him the promise that destroyed my own career;
but he was the only man who had felt a real friendship for me, and he
was the only one whom I loved next to my mother.
"I discovered the whole responsibility and painfulness of my position
very soon after his death. Prince Alexius was a light-minded and
depraved, if not absolutely bad man. I did my duty without caring
whether it made him dislike me or not; he respected me at least. It was
a time of great anxiety and trouble; one thing alone sustained me, and
that was the consciousness of having done my duty. Then we went to
Baden-Baden, where I made your acquaintance, Frau Graefin...."
She had until now listened to him with bent head, but at these words she
fixed her eyes upon his face, as though awaiting a sentence of life or
death. And he continued, with a slight quiver in his voice:
"I will not attempt to recall the events of that happy time to your
memory. I loved you with all my heart and soul, and I know that you
loved me. If it is any comfort to you to know it, let me tell you that I
never doubted your love for me, even at the moment when you wounded me
most deeply. But there is one thing I ought to tell you, and that is why
I did not then inform you of all that you now know. I did not conceal it
from any false shame about my past or my religion, but simply because I
never thought of it. You were my first love, and my sad restless heart
found rest and happiness in you. I shall always be grateful to you for
that short time of unalloyed happiness. First love knows nothing of the
past, and does not look forward to the future. The German poet was right
when he wrote, 'First love does not know that it must die, as a child
does not know what death is, although it may often hear of it.' My love
was so great that I did not guess that your love might change when you
learned that a Jewish mother had borne me, and that I had been a poor
Talmudist. It was not because you were the Graefin Jadwiga Bortynska that
I loved you, but because you were you--a noble high-minded woman, whose
heart beat in response to mine. I could never have felt a different kind
of love than this, for the experience of life had made me grave and
proud. What separates us now, and must separate us for ever, is that you
were not what I thought you, that you could not rise above the
prejudices of your station--it is that, and that alone....
"I did not just come to this conviction," he went on, his voice once
more sounding clear and full, "during the long years that have passed
since we parted; I felt it even in that dark hour when I read the letter
in which you wrote, 'If you are really a Jew, if rumor tells the truth
about your past life, all is over between us now and for ever.' Even
then I knew that the breach was irreparable, and that our love was a
blunder; so I did not do as another in my position might have done, I
did not try to appeal to what little love for me might still remain in
your heart--I went away.
"I went away to France, to England, and from there to America. But I
carried my sorrow with me wherever I went. I suffered much, and had a
hard struggle before I could think of all that had happened with less
pain; for you had been the sunshine and spring of my life; and when my
faith in you was destroyed, it seemed as if faith in everything else
must go with it. But in time I conquered that feeling. When my suffering
was worst to bear, I devoted my life to the care of the sick and
wretched; for it had changed me. In the old days I had worked for name
and fame, and from an intense love of knowledge. Pride and self-seeking
had induced me to put out all my powers to get on in the world, but my
own sorrow taught me to feel for others, and to determine that
henceforth my life should be spent in strengthening and upholding my
brother men, as far as in me lay. I was tired, dreadfully tired, when
the battle was over. I can not bend under the blast of misfortune, but
am broken by it. It is my nature; I can not help it. Where could I work
better than at home? So I came back to Barnow, to the people who had
been kind to me in my childhood, and to the graves of my parents.... I
returned to a faith in a God of love and mercy, and worship Him in the
religious forms I have been accustomed to since my infancy. It was not
repentance that brought this about, for I had not been a sinner. It was
not any desire to propitiate the Deity, for I feel neither hope nor
desire of any kind. It was an unspeakably deep, an unspeakably anxious
longing for a firm support to which I could cling in the darkness,
sorrow, and confusion in which I was plunged.... I learned to love my
people again--my poor, despised, persecuted people--and, in order to be
one with them, I resumed their dress. I have not made a name for myself,
as was once my ambition, but have become a poor and simple tender of the
sick; but many people down there in Barnow, both Jew and Christian, have
turned their hearts to God for my sake. Perhaps I might have gained the
fame for which I used to thirst, if I had remained in the rush of life;
but here it is better--I do my work and feel no pain. I have ceased to
ask, as I often did in the bitterness of anger and misery, why all this
should have come upon me, and what I had done to deserve it. I am now at
peace, and am therefore happy: I have learned renunciation!..."
He was silent. The setting sun cast its light over the lake and the
blossoming trees outside, and it also rested like a glory on the calm
pale face of the speaker.
After a short pause he continued:
"I did not know that you were the possessor of my native town until you
arrived at the castle a few weeks ago. I hoped that we should never meet
again: for your sake. I knew that if we did, your pain and repentance
would be reawakened; for you loved me too, though it was with a
different love."
He ceased speaking. She did not answer. She only sobbed--a low,
shuddering sob, as from a broken heart. He rose to go. Then she once
more approached him, her face deadly pale, and heavy tears falling from
her widely opened eyes.
"So this is the end," she murmured almost inaudibly. "The end.... I have
found you only to lose you for ever. Friedrich! Friedrich!... it will
kill me...."
He looked at her compassionately, and then said very gently:
"You will also gain calmness and peace, and then you will be happier.
You will then understand that I could not have acted otherwise."
She sighed deeply.
"I am severely punished," she said, with trembling lips. "I must pay for
the weakness of a moment with the misery of a long, long life. But there
is one thing I can not have you do. You must not despise me. I was
induced to write you that letter by the devilish machination of a
wretch, who knew how to make use of the prejudice that my people feel
against yours--a prejudice I learned in my earliest childhood."
"I thought so," he interrupted her, mildly. "I have felt the effects of
that prejudice sorely. I forgive you all the more easily. But who was
it?"
"Prince Alexius Sugatscheff," she answered.
"What! That man!" he exclaimed contemptuously; but immediately forced
back the words he would have uttered, and continued quietly:
"Thank you for telling me this. It makes it easier for me to forgive
myself for having partly broken my promise to the old prince...."
It had grown darker in the summer-house now, and the sun had set.
"Good-by, Jadwiga," he said, in a low voice. "Be happy!"--he took her
hand in his--"and never forget that we shall meet again one day."
She could not speak. She stood in the middle of the room listening,
until the last echo of his footsteps died away, and then fell fainting
on the floor....
The next day found Baron Starsky as troubled in mind and as thoughtful
as on the previous day. Graefin Jadwiga had gone away very early in the
morning. Nobody knew where. He was much put out, for in spite of the
curious scene he had witnessed between her and "that beast of a Jew," he
would perhaps--have married her.
The man against whom his wrath was roused was however at that very
moment lovingly stroking the boyish head of the writer of these pages,
and comforting him in his sorrow. He had just told the boy that he could
be his teacher no longer, for he must now give every moment of his time
to the sick and miserable.
* * * * *
The Jewish burial-ground at Barnow is a pretty and quiet place--a place
that brings thoughts of peace and not of terror--especially in summer,
when the blue sky smiles down upon the little field with its fresh green
grass and sweet-scented flowers. A blossoming elder-bush is to be found
close to the crumbling headstone of every grave.
There is one on the Bocher's grave, as on all of the others. I have
often sat under it and thought of the man who sleeps beneath its shadow.
And whenever I went there I used to read the beautiful and touchingly
simple words upon the headstone, which tell how he had devoted himself
to the help of the helpless and the care of the sick, and how he had,
like a true hero, died at his post....
He went "home" a year after the interview I have described between him
and Graefin Jadwiga. Low fever was very prevalent in the "Gasse" that
winter. David saved all he could, and never spared himself in any way.
At last he also took it. He recovered from the fever, but his strength
was so much weakened by it, that he fell into a decline, and faded
slowly but visibly. He never ceased his labors until he was actually
confined to bed. There he lay quietly, and hardly liked people to put
themselves out of the way by nursing him.
He sent for me a few days before his death, so I went to see him. He
looked pale and ill, and was lying beside the open window, through which
the first breath of spring was penetrating his close room.
"I am glad that you have come," he said, with a kind smile. "I have
something to say to you before I die...."
He paused a moment, and then went on:
"I was very wrong when I spoke to you about vengeance and retribution
for the humiliation we have suffered. I entreat you to forget that, and
always wait and think, in the spirit of the words I then quoted to
you--'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.' I know that a hasty
word is often deeply engraved on a child's mind, so I want you to put
your hand in mine, and promise that you will do this, and will try not
to allow yourself to think such thoughts as those I uttered in my
anger."
I promised him with passionate tears. Boy as I was, I could not help
feeling the greatness of soul shown by this man, who, even when he was
dying, had time to think of doing good to others.
"You are crying, foolish child," he said, gently. "You should not do
so. Have I not often been face to face with death before? And, believe
me, death is not terrible--he comes as a friend and comforter to man. It
is true that I should have liked to have lived a little longer, and to
have gone on with the work I had undertaken; but God, who rules our
lives, has willed that it should not be so. His will be done!..."
He pushed my hair back from my forehead, and placing his hand on my head
in blessing, added:
"Good-by, my child! good-by! and ... may you be happier than your
teacher!"
The last words were said so low that I could scarcely hear them.
One beautiful bright spring morning his attendant found him dead, with a
smile upon his lips.
Graefin Jadwiga is still alive, and is still a beautiful woman. Who can
tell whether she is happy, or whether, at the bottom of her heart, there
is not a sad remembrance of the man whom she had really loved after her
own fashion?
She painted the picture of Christ--that strange product of religious
enthusiasm and human love--in Switzerland during the summer that
succeeded David Blum's death. The art she had once followed as an
amusement now, perhaps, brought her comfort; and the picture also showed
that she had understood the nobility and greatness of the self-sacrifice
made by the Jew for her sake and his own.
This is the story of the picture of Christ at Barnow. It is strange and
sad, as I said before; but do not blame me for that, for my heart bleeds
when I remember this over-true tale, which must be regarded as one of
the dark riddles of life, and as the doing of that eternal, inscrutable
Power that deals out darkness or light, happiness or misery, to the weak
human heart....
NAMELESS GRAVES.
(1873.)
The last time that I went there was on a beautiful, still autumn day.
The sunshine was brightening the landscape, and the only sound to be
heard was the faint crackling of the withered leaves on the bushes by
the wayside. I followed the winding path that ran through the fields and
gardens. I was alone, but I knew the place so well that I did not need
to ask my way; for I always go there when I revisit my old home, and
every year I become more attached to it. Every year the number of
acquaintances to whom it leads me grows more numerous; indeed, the day
will soon come when none of them will be found in the little town, for
all will be there....
It was the "good place" to which I was going; and as this is the only
place to which neither the Pole's whip nor the covetous hand of the
wonder-working rabbi can reach, the name is a good one. Here each poor
soul is freed from the double ban--and who can count its victims?--that
ground him down, and stifled the good that was in him. He is delivered
alike from outward humiliation and from the dark night of ignorance.
None of these people could have been called really happy until they
died. Then, it is true, they know nothing about it, but they feel that
it must be so even while they are alive; so they have given their
burial-ground the beautiful name of the "good place," and take care to
make it as fair to look upon as they can. It never occurs to the Eastern
Jews to plant trees or sow annuals there; but the fresh green grass is
allowed to cover the graves, and blossoming elders grow by every
headstone. Their burial-ground was the only bit of land these people
were allowed to possess until a few years ago!...
The "good place" at Barnow is as sweet a spot as is to be found
anywhere. I have already described what it was like in late spring when
the elders were in blossom, filling the air with a perfume that was
almost too powerful, and when the red and purple berries were beginning
to show among the leaves. In autumn the bushes are shorn of much of
their former beauty, but they are pleasant to look at even then in their
own way. The air in September is so wonderfully clear and bright, and
the autumnal tints are so vivid, that they lend the somewhat
uninteresting landscape a beauty of their own. The moor is never a
cheerful place, and it looks more calm and solemn than ever in autumn;
but not _triste_--the heather glows with too deep a red, and the foliage
of the limes fades into too soft a yellow for that. Here and there a
pond may be seen with its dark, clear waters. Any one going to the
burial-ground through country such as this, can not fail, I think, to be
impressed with its quiet beauty. But perhaps I am not a good judge of
that; perhaps one must have been born in a moorland country to be able
to appreciate it....
The "good place" lies on a hill, from which one has an extensive view on
all sides. From thence one can see ten ponds, hard by which some
villages are situated, whose houses, roofed with brown thatch, resemble
collections of bee-hives; and finally, at the foot of the hill is the
town, which has a very respectable appearance from there, although, in
reality, it is neither more nor less than a wretchedly dirty hole. One
is able to breathe more freely when enjoying such an extensive view,
such a wide horizon-line. For to east, north, and south the only limit
is the sky, and on gray days the same is the case to the west. But when
the air is clear and bright, one can see what looks like a
curiously-shaped blue-gray bank of cloud on the western horizon. On
seeing it for the first time one is inclined to believe that a storm is
brewing there. But the cloud neither increases nor decreases in size,
and though its outline may seem to shift now and then, it stands fast
for ever--it is the Carpathian range of mountains....
But it is beautiful close to where one is standing also. It is true that
the queer, twisted branches of the elders are now leafless and bare of
blossom and fruit, but they are interlaced with a delicate network of
spiders' webs that tremble and glow with prismatic colors in the
sunlight. Their deep-red leaves cover the graves, and between the
hillocks are flowering asters. The graves are well cared for; the Jewish
people have a great reverence for the majesty of Death.
To the Jews, Death is a mighty and somewhat stern ruler, who is kindly
disposed to poor humanity, and draws them to him in mercy. These people
do not like to die, but death is easier and pleasanter to them than to
others, for their belief in immortality is more absolute than that of
any other nation. This belief is not merely founded on self-love, but on
love to God. Is not God all-just? and where would be His justice if He
did not requite them in the other world for all the misery heaped upon
them while they lived on earth? And yet they cling to this earth, and
regard all the blessedness of heaven as a state of transition, a
preparation and foretaste of the fuller blessedness of earth after the
coming of the Messiah. It is therefore serving God to bury the dead. It
is therefore serving God to tend the graves of those who are gone. Even
the oldest and most weather-beaten gravestone is propped up and steadied
by some great-grandson, or perhaps one who was no blood relation of the
deceased, and who was only moved to do it because the sleeper had once
been a man like himself who had felt the joys and sorrows of humanity.
He was a Jew, and he should find his resting-place in order when the
trumpet should sound. Some people may look upon this belief as
ludicrous, but I could never feel it so....
One's heart and mind are full of many thoughts as one wanders up the
hill between the rows of graves. I do not mean those eternal questions
which one generation inherits as a legacy of torment from those that
have preceded it, and to which only fools suppose they can give an
adequate answer. Verily, we all hope for such an answer, for we are all
fools, poor fools, with an eternal bandage covering our eyes, and an
eternal thirst for knowledge filling our spirits. But why touch
unnecessarily on such deep subjects? I mean questions of a different
kind from these. Whoever, for example, walks through that part of the
cemetery where the hill slopes down gently to the plain below, near the
river, can not help thinking of the evil consequences of two Polish
nobles determining to show themselves humane at the same time. On four
hundred headstones the same year is chiseled as the date of death--the
same year, the same day, the same hour--it is an unspeakable history.
Wet? no! drowned in blood and tears! And it all came from a
contemporaneous desire for the exercise of the virtue of humanity!
During the time that the Polish kings had power in the land, the
Jagellons protected the Jews, who paid them tribute in return. But as
the royal authority became of less and less account--still existent,
more because it refused to die than because any remnant of power
remained to it--the Waywodes, and in the flat land the Starosts,
snatched at the chance of taking the Jews under their protection; they
were one and all so filled to overflowing with the milk of human
kindness. A large and rich Jewish community lived in Barnow, so it was
regarded as doing God good service to take care of so great a number of
men who were capable of paying considerable taxes with ease. Two
Starosts--those of Tulste and of Old Barnow--drew up in battle array,
one at each side of the town, and each sent a message to the following
effect to the Jewish community: "If you do not choose me as your
protector, I shall at once put you and your possessions to fire and
sword." The unfortunate Jews had not much time granted them in which to
deliberate; they quickly gathered together all the ready money that they
could, and bought the protection of both. This conduct brought down
further misfortunes upon the poor people. The Starosts were both
philanthropists, and both wished to fulfill the duty they had
undertaken. Neither trusted the other with a work of such importance,
and each determined to put his rival to the proof; so the Starost of Old
Barnow began to murder and plunder the Jews at one end of the town, and
then waited to see whether the other would do his duty and protect his
_proteges_. But, unfortunately, his rival was equally determined to try
the worth of his promises, and had been doing exactly the same at the
other end. Thus neither gained his object. Good men seldom attain what
they strive for! The terrible carnage lasted for three days and three
nights....
The mild autumn sunshine falls as softly on the graves of these murdered
people as elsewhere, and the asters are larger and more perfect between
these closely massed hillocks; the grasshoppers chirp merrily in the
grass and moss that cover them, and the autumn threads spun by the busy
spider wave to and fro in the gentle breeze. Peace and quiet reign here
also--a peace as restful as in any other part of the "good place;" and
yet it seems to me as though a sudden cry must arise from these graves,
as though a piercing, agonized cry must break the stillness of all
around; and that cry would not be one of mourning, but of accusation,
and not alone of the Starosts of Tulste and Old Barnow....