the heart when she noticed that he trembled as if a chill had seized
him, and, drawing a long breath, pushed back the hair, which like a
coalblack curtain, covered half his forehead. She had wept bitterly, but
he shed no tears. Only a few poor words were exchanged between them in
that hour, but each one still echoed in her ears to-day, as if hours
instead of years intervened between that time and now.
"Mine was so good," Xanthe had sobbed; but he only nodded, and, after
fifteen minutes had passed, said nothing but, "And mine too."
In spite of the long pause that separated the girl's words from the
boy's, they were tenderly united, bound together by the thought,
dwelling uninterruptedly in both childish hearts, "My mother was so
good."
It was again Xanthe who, after some time, had broken the silence by
asking "Whom have I now?"
Again it was long ere Phaon, for his only answer, could repeat softly:
"Yes, whom?"
They were trivial words, but they expressed the deep wretchedness which
only a child's heart can feel.
Scarcely had they found their way over the boy's lips when he pressed
his left hand also over his eyes, his breast heaved convulsively, and a
torrent of burning tears coursed down his cheeks.
Both children still had their fathers, but they forgot them in this
hour.
Who, if the warm sun were extinguished, would instantly remember that
the moon and stars remain?
As Phaon wept so violently, Xanthe's tears began to flow more slowly,
and she gazed at him a long time with ardent sympathy, unperceived by
the lad, for he still covered his eyes with his hands.
The child had met a greater grief than her own, and, as soon as she
felt that she was less sorrow-stricken than her playfellow, a desire to
soothe his sorrow arose.
As the whole plant, with its flowers and fruit, is contained in the
sprouting seed, so, too, in the youngest girl lives the future mother,
who dries all tears, cheers and consoles.
As Phaon remained in the same attitude, Xanthe rose, approached him,
timidly pulled his cloak, and said:
"Come down to our house; I will show you something pretty: four young
doves have come out of the shell; they have big, wide bills, and are
very ugly."
Her playmate removed his hands from his eyes and answered kindly:
"No, let me alone, please."
Xanthe now took his hand and drew him away, saying:
"Yes, you must come; the pole of my cart is broken."
Phaon had been so accustomed to be always called upon whenever there
were any of the little girl's playthings to mend that he obeyed, and the
next day allowed her to persuade him to do many things for which he felt
no inclination.
He yielded in order not to grieve her, and, as he became more cheerful
and even joined in her merry laugh, Xanthe rejoiced as if she had
released him from his sorrow. From that time she claimed his services as
eagerly as before, but in her own heart felt as if she were his little
mother, and watched all his actions as though specially commissioned to
do so.
When she had grown up she did not hesitate to encourage or blame him,
nay, was often vexed or grieved about him, especially if in the games or
dances he paid more attention than she deemed reasonable to other girls,
against whom there was much or little objection, nay, often none at all.
Not on her own account, she said to herself, it could make no difference
to her, but she knew these girls, and it was her duty to warn him.
She willingly forgave many things, but on this point was extremely
rigid, and even allowed anger to carry her to the verge of rudeness.
Now, as she stood beside the sepulchre, she thought of the hour when she
had comforted him, of her care for him and how it had all been vain, for
he spent his nights in rioting with flute-playing women. Yes, Semestre
had said so. He seemed to Xanthe lost, utterly lost.
When she wept in the morning beside the spring, it was not, she now
thought, because of the heiress from Messina; no, the tears that had
sprung to her eyes were like those a mother sheds for her erring son.
She seemed to herself extremely venerable, and would have thought it
only natural if gray hair instead of golden had adorned the head over
which scarcely seventeen years had passed.
She even assumed the gait of a dignified matron, but it was hardly like
a mother, when, on her way to the rose-bushes by the sea, she studiously
strove to misunderstand and pervert everything good in Phaon, and call
his quiet nature indolence, his zeal to be useful to her weakness, his
taciturn manner mere narrow-mindedness, and even his beautiful, dreamy
eyes sleepy.
With all this, the young girl found little time to think of the new
suitor; she must first shatter the old divine image, but every blow of
the hammer hurt her as if it fell upon herself.
CHAPTER VI.
The rose-bush to which Xanthe went grew on the dike that belonged in
common to her father and uncle, beside a bench of beautifully-polished
white marble.
Many a winter had loosened the different blocks, and bordered them with
yellow edges.
Even at a distance the girl saw that the seat was not vacant. The
brook that flowed from the spring to the sea ran beneath it, and the
maid-servants were in the habit of washing the household linen in its
swift current.
Were they now using the bench to spread out the garments they had
rinsed?
No! A man lay on the hard marble, a man who had drawn his light cloak
over his face to protect himself from the rays of the sun, now rising
higher and higher.
His sandaled feet and ankles, bandaged as if for journeying, appeared
beneath the covering.
By these feet Xanthe quickly recognized the sleeping youth.
It was Phaon. She would have known him, even if she had seen only two of
his fingers.
The sun would soon reach its meridian height, and there he lay asleep.
At first it had startled her to find him here, but she soon felt nothing
but indignation, and again the image of the flute-playing women, with
whom he must have revelled until thus exhausted, rose before her mind.
"Let him sleep," she murmured proudly and contemptuously; she passed
him, cut a handful of roses from the bushes covered with crimson and
yellow blossoms, sat down on the vacant space beside his head, watched
for the ship from Messina, and, as it did not come, began to weave the
garland.
She could do the work here as well as anywhere else, and told herself
that it was all the same to her whether Phaon or her father's linen
lay there. But her heart belied these reflections, for it throbbed so
violently that it ached.
And why would not her fingers move; why could her eyes scarcely
distinguish the red roses from the yellow ones?
The garden was perfectly still, the sea seemed to slumber, and, if a
wave lapped the shore, it was with a low, almost inaudible murmur.
A butterfly hovered like a dream over her roses, and a lizard glided
noiselessly, like a sudden thought, into a chink between the stones at
her feet. Not a breath of air stirred, not a leaf or a twig fell from
the trees.
Yonder, as if slumbering under a blue veil, lay the Calabrian coast,
while nearer and more distant, but always noiselessly, ships and boats,
with gently swelling sails, glided over the water. Even the cicadas
seemed to sleep, and everything around was as still, as horribly still,
as if the breath of the world, blooming and sparkling about her, was
ready to fail.
Xanthe sat spellbound beside the sleeper, while her heart beat so
rapidly and strongly that she fancied it was the only sound audible in
this terrible silence.
The sunbeams poured fiercely on her head, her cheeks glowed, a painful
anxiety overpowered her, and certainly not to rouse Phaon, but merely to
hear some noise, she coughed twice, not without effort. When she did so
the third time, the sleeper stirred, removed from his face the end of
the cloak that had covered his head, slowly raised himself a little,
and, without changing his recumbent posture, said simply and quietly, in
an extremely musical voice:
"Is that you; Xanthe?"
The words were low, but sounded very joyous.
The girl merely cast a swift glance at the speaker, and then seemed as
busily occupied with her roses as if she were sitting entirely alone.
"Well?" he asked again, fixing his large dark eyes upon her with an
expression of surprise, and waiting for some greeting.
As she remained persistently silent, he exclaimed, still in the same
attitude:
"I wish you a joyful morning, Xanthe." The young girl, without answering
this greeting, gazed upward to the sky and sun as long as she could
endure the light, but her lips quivered, and she flung the rose she held
in her hand among its fellows in her lap.
Phaon had followed the direction of her look, and again broke the
silence, saying with a smile, no less quietly than before:
"Yes, indeed, the sun tells me I've been sleeping here a long time; it
is almost noon."
The youth's composure aroused a storm of indignation in Xanthe's breast.
Her excitable blood fairly seethed, and she was obliged to put the
utmost constraint upon herself not to throw her roses in his face.
But she succeeded in curbing her wrath, and displaying intense
eagerness, as she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed toward some
ships that appeared in view.
"I don't know what is the matter with you," said Phaon, smoothing with
his right hand the black hair that covered half his forehead. "Do you
expect the ship from Messina and my father already?"
"And my cousin Leonax" replied the girl, quickly, putting a strong
emphasis upon the last name.
Then she again gazed into the distance. Phaon shook his head, and both
remained silent for several minutes. At last he raised himself higher,
turned his full face toward the young girl, gazed at her as tenderly
and earnestly as if he wished to stamp her image upon his soul for life,
gently pulled the long, floating sleeve of her peplum, and said:
"I didn't think it would be necessary--but I must ask you something."
While he spoke, Xanthe rested her right elbow on her knee, drummed on
her scarlet lips with her fingers, and clasped the back of the marble
bench with her out-stretched left arm.
Her eyes told him that she was ready to listen, though she still uttered
no word of reply.
"I have a question to ask you, Xanthe!" continued Phaon.
"You?" interrupted the girl, with visible astonishment.
"I, who else? Jason told me yesterday evening that our uncle Alciphron
had wooed you for his son Leonax, and was sure of finding a favorable
reception from old Semestre and your poor father. I went at once to ask
you if it were true, but turned back again, for there were other things
to be done, and I thought we belonged to each other, and you could not
love any one so well as you loved me. I don't like useless words, and
cannot tell you what is in my heart, but you knew it long ago. Now
you are watching for your cousin Leonax. We have never seen him, and I
should think--"
"But I know," interrupted the girl, rising so hastily that her roses
fell unheeded on the ground--"but I know he is a sensible man, his
father's right-hand, a man who would disdain to riot all night with
flute-playing women, and to woo girls only because they are rich."
"I don't do that either," replied Phaon. "Your flowers have dropped on
the ground--"
With these words the youth rose, bent over the roses, gathered them
together, and offered them to Xanthe with his left hand, while trying to
clasp her fingers in his right; but she drew back, saying:
"Put them on the bench, and go up to wash the sleep from your eyes."
"Do I look weary?"
"Of course, though you've lain here till noon."
"But I have scarcely slept for several days."
"And dare you boast of it?" asked Xanthe, with glowing cheeks. "I am not
your mother, and you must do as you choose, but if you think I belonged
to you because we played with each other as children, and I was not
unwilling to give you my hand in the dance, you are mistaken. I care
for, no man who turns day into night and night into day."
At the last words Xanthe's eyes filled with tears, and Phaon noticed it
with astonishment.
He gazed at her sadly and beseechingly, and then fixed his eyes on the
ground. At last he began to suspect the cause of her anger, and asked,
smiling:
"You probably mean that I riot all night?"
"Yes!" cried Xanthe; she withdrew her hand for the second time, and half
turned away.
"Oh!" he replied, in a tone of mingled surprise and sorrow, "you ought
not to have believed that."
"Xanthe turned, raised her eyes in astonishment, and asked
"Then where have you been these last nights?"
"Up in your olive-grove with the three Hermes."
"You?"
"How amazed you look!"
"I was only thinking of the wicked fellows who have robbed many trees
of their fruit. That savage Korax, with his thievish sons, lives just
beside the wall."
"For your sake, Xanthe, and because your poor father is ill and unable
to look after his property, while Mopsus and your fishermen and slaves
were obliged to go in the ship to Messina, to handle the oars and manage
the sails, I always went up as soon as it grew dark."
"And have you kept watch there?"
"Yes."
"So many nights?"
"One can sleep after sunrise."
"How tired you must be!"
"I'll make up my sleep when my father returns."
"They say he is seeking the rich Mentor's only daughter for your wife."
"Not with my will, certainly."
"Phaon!"
"I am glad you will give me your hand again."
"You dear, good, kind fellow, how shall I thank you?"
"Anything but that! If you hadn't thought such foolish things about me,
I should never have spoken of my watch up yonder. Who could have done it
except myself, before Mopsus came back?"
"No one, no one but you! But now--now ask your question at once."
"May I? O Xanthe, dear, dear Xanthe, will you have me or our cousin
Leonax for your husband?"
"You, you, only you, and nobody else on earth!" cried the girl, throwing
both arms around him. Phaon clasped her closely, and joyously kissed her
brow and lips.
The sky, the sea, the sun, everything near or distant that was bright
and beautiful, was mirrored in their hearts, and it seemed to both as
if they heard all creatures that sing, laugh, and rejoice. Each thought
that, in the other, he or she possessed the whole world with all its joy
and happiness. They were united, wholly united, there was nothing except
themselves, and thus they became to each other an especially blissful
world, beside which every other created thing sank into nothingness.
Minute after minute passed, nearly an hour had elapsed, and, instead of
making garlands, Xanthe clasped her arms around Phaon's neck; instead
of gazing into the distant horizon, she looked into his eyes; instead
of watching for approaching steps, both listened to the same sweet words
which lovers always repeat, and yet never grow weary of speaking and
hearing.
The roses lay on the ground, the ship from Messina ran into the bay
beside the estate, and Semestre hobbled down to the sea to look
for Xanthe, and in the place of the master of the house receive her
favorite's son, who came as a suitor, like a god.
She repeatedly called the girl's name before reaching the marble bench,
but always in vain.
When she had at last reached the myrtle grove, which had concealed the
lovers from her eyes, she could not help beholding the unwelcome sight.
Xanthe was resting her head on Phaon's breast, while he bent down and
kissed her eyes, her mouth, and at last--who ever did such things in her
young days?--even her delicate little nose.
For several minutes Semestre's tongue seemed paralyzed, but at last she
raised both arms, and a cry of mingled indignation and anguish escaped
her lips.
Xanthe started up in terror, but Phaon remained sitting on the marble
bench, held the young girl's hand in his own, and looked no more
surprised than if some fruit had dropped from the tree beside him.
The youth's composure increased the old woman's fury, and her lips were
just parting to utter a torrent of angry words, when Jason stepped as
lightly as a boy between her and the betrothed lovers, cast a delighted
glance at his favorites, and bowing with comic dignity to Semestre
cried, laughing:
"The two will be husband and wife, my old friend, and ought to ask your
blessing, unless you wickedly intend to violate a solemn vow."
"I will--I will! When did I--" shrieked the house-keeper.
"Didn't you," interrupted Jason, raising his voice--"didn't you vow this
morning that you would prepare Phaon's wedding-feast with your own hands
as soon as you yourself offered a sacrifice to the Cyprian goddess to
induce her to unite their hearts?"
"And I'll stick to it, so surely as the gracious goddess--"
"I hold you to your promise!" exclaimed Jason. "Your sucking-pig has
just been offered to Aphrodite. The priest gladly accepted it and
slaughtered it before my eyes, imploring the goddess with me, to fill
Xanthe's heart with love for Phaon."
The house-keeper clenched her hands, approached Jason, and so plainly
showed her intention of attacking him that the steward, who had assailed
many a wild-boar, retreated--by no means fearlessly.
She forced him back to the marble bench, screaming:
"So that's why the priest found no word of praise for my beautiful pig!
You're a thief, a cheat! You took my dear little pig, which all the
other gods might envy the mother of Eros, put in its place a wretched
animal just like yourself, and falsely said it came from me. Oh, I see
through the whole game! That fine Mopsus was your accomplice; but so
true as I--"
"Mopsus has entered our service," replied Jason, laughing; "and, if
our Phaon's bride will permit, he wants to wed the dark-haired Dorippe.
Henceforth our property is yours."
"And ours yours," replied Xanthe--"Be good-natured, Semestre; I will
marry no man but Phaon, and shall soon win my father over to our side,
rely upon that."
The house-keeper was probably forced to believe these very resolute
words, for, like a vanquished but skilful general, she began to think of
covering her retreat, saying:
"I was outwitted; but, what I vowed in a moment of weakness. I have
now sworn again. I am only sorry for your poor father, who needed a
trustworthy son, and the good Leonax--"
At this moment, as if he had heard his name and obediently appeared
at her call, the son of Alciphron, of Messina, appeared with Phaon's
father, Protarch, from the shadow of the myrtle-grove.
He was a gay, handsome youth, richly and carefully dressed. After many a
pressure of the hand and cordial words of welcome, Phaon took the young
girl's hand and led her to the new-comers, saying:
"Give me Xanthe for a wife, my father. We have grown up together like
the ivy and wild vine on the wall, and cannot part."
"No certainly not," added Xanthe, blushing and nestling closely to her
lover's side, as she gazed beseechingly first at her uncle, and then at
the young visitor from Messina.
"Children, children!" cried Protarch, "you spoil my best plans. I had
destined Agariste, the rich Mentor's only child, for you, foolish boy,
and already had come to terms with the old miser. But who can say I
will, or this and that shall happen to-morrow? You are very sweet and
charming my girl, and I don't say that I shouldn't be glad, but--mighty
Zeus! what will my brother Alciphron say--and you, Leonax?"
"I?" asked the young man, smiling. "I came here like a dutiful son,
but I confess I rejoice over what has happened, for now my parents
will hardly say 'No' a second time, when I beg them to give me Codrus's
daughter, Ismene, for my wife."
"And there stands a maiden who seems to like to hear such uncivil words
better than Helen loved Paris's flattering speeches!" exclaimed Phaon's
father, first kissing his future daughter's cheek and then his son's
forehead.
"But now let us go to father," pleaded Xanthe.
"Only one moment," replied Protarch, "to look after the boxes the people
are bringing.--Take care of the large chest with the Phoenician dishes
and matron's robes, my lads."
During the first moments of the welcome, Semestre had approached her
darling's son, told him who she was, received his father's messages of
remembrance, kissed his hand, and stroked his arm.
His declaration that he wished another maiden than Xanthe for his wife
soothed her not a little, and when she now heard of matrons' dresses,
and not merely one robe, her eyes sparkled joyously, and, fixing them on
the ground, she asked:
"Is there a blue one among them? I'm particularly fond of blue."
"I've selected a blue one, too," replied Protarch. "I'll explain for
what purpose up yonder. Now we'll go and greet my brother."
Xanthe, hand in hand with her lover, hurried on in advance of the
procession, lovingly prepared her father for what had happened, told
him how much injustice he, old Semestre, and she herself had done poor
Phaon, led the youth to him, and, deeply agitated, sank on her knees
before him as he laid her hand in her playfellow's, exclaiming in a
trembling voice:
"I have always loved you, curly-head, and Xanthe wants you for her
husband. Then I, too, should have a son!--Hear, lofty Olympians, a good,
strong, noble son! Help me up, my boy. How well I feel! Haven't I
gained in you two stout legs and arms? Only let the old woman come to me
to-day! The conjurer taught me how to meet her."
Leaning on Phaon's strong shoulder he joyously went out of the house,
greeted his handsome young nephew as well as his brother, and said:
"Let Phaon live with Xanthe in my house, which will soon be his own, for
I am feeble and need help."
"With all my heart," cried Protarch, "and it will be well on every
account, for, for--well, it must come out, for I, foolish graybeard--"
"Well?" asked Lysander, and Semestre curved her hand into a shell and
held it to her ear to hear better.
"I--just look at me--I, Protarch, Dionysius's son, can no longer bear to
stay in the house all alone with that silent youth and old Jason, and so
I have--perhaps it is a folly, but certainly no crime--so I have chosen
a new wife in Messina."
"Protarch!" cried Lysander, raising his hands in astonishment; but
Phaon nodded to his father approvingly, exchanging a joyous glance with
Xanthe.
"He has chosen my mother's younger sister," said Leonax.
"The younger, yes, but not the youngest," interrupted Protarch. "You
must have your wedding in three days, children. Phaon will live here in
your house, Lysander, with his Xanthe, end I in the old one yonder with
my Praxilla. Directly after your marriage I shall go back to Messina
with Leonax and bring home my wife."
"We have long needed a mistress in the house, and I bless your bold
resolution!" exclaimed Jason.
"Yes, you were always brave," said the invalid.
"But not so very courageous this time as it might seem," answered
Protarch, smiling. "Praxilla is an estimable widow, and it was for her I
purchased in Messina the matron's robes for which you asked, Semestre."
"For her?" murmured the old woman. "There is a blue one among them too,
which will be becoming, for she has light brown hair very slightly mixed
with gray. But she is cheerful, active, and clever, and will aid Phaon
and Xanthe in their young house-keeping with many a piece of good
advice."
"I shall go to my daughter in Agrigentum," said Semestre, positively.
"Go," replied Lysander, kindly, "and enjoy yourself in your old age on
the money you have saved."
"Which my father," added Leonax, "will increase by the sum of a thousand
drachmae.
"My Alciphron has a heart!" cried the house-keeper.
"You shall receive from me, on the day of your departure, the same sum
and a matron's blue robe," said Lysander.
Shortly after the marriage of Xanthe and Phaon, Semestre went to live
with her daughter.
The dike by the sea was splendidly repaired without any dispute, for
the estate once more belonged to the two brothers in common, and Xanthe
found in Praxilla a new, kind mother.
The marble seat, on which the young people's fate was decided, was
called by the grandchildren of the wedded pair, who lived to old age in
love and harmony, "the bench of the question."
THE ELIXIR.
By Georg Ebers
Every Leipziger knows well the tall gabled house in the
Katherinenstrasse which I have in mind. It stands not far from the
Market Place, and is particularly dear to the writer of this true story
because it has been in the possession of his family for a long time.
Many curious things have happened there worthy of being rescued from
oblivion, and though my relatives would now like to relieve me of
this task, because I have found it necessary to point out to certain
ingenuous ones among them the truth which they were endeavoring to
conceal, I rejoice that I have sufficient leisure to chronicle for
future generations of Ueberhells the wonderful life and doings of their
progenitor as I learned them from my grandmother and other good people.
So here, then, begins my story.
Of old, the aforementioned house was known as "The Three Kings," but in
no otherwise was it distinguished from its neighbours in the street save
through the sign of the Court apothecary on the ground floor; this
hung over the arched doorway, and gay with bright colour and gilding
represented the three patron Saints of the craft: Caspar, Melchior, and
Balthasar.
This house in the Katherinenstrasse continued to be called "The Three
Kings," although, soon after the death of old Caspar Ueberhell, the sign
was removed, and the shop closed. And many things happened to it and the
house which ran counter to the usual course of events and the wishes of
the worthy burghers.
Gossip there had been in plenty even during the lifetime of the old
Court apothecary whose only son Melchior had left his father's house
and Leipsic not merely to spend a few years in Prague, or Paris or Italy
like any other son of well-to-do parents who wished to perfect himself
in his studies, but, as it would seem, for good and all.
Both as school-boy and student Melchior had been one of the most gifted
and most brilliant, and many a father, whose son took a wicked delight
in wanton and graceless escapades, had with secret envy congratulated
old Ueberhell on having such an exceptionally talented, industrious
and obedient treasure of a son and heir. But later not one of these
men would have exchanged his heedless scrapegrace of a boy for the much
bepraised paragon of the Court apothecary, since, after all, a bad son
is better than none at all.
Melchior, in fact, came not home, and that this weighed on the mind of
the old man and hastened his death was beyond doubt; for although the
stately Court apothecary's rotund countenance remained as round and
beaming as the sun for three years after the departure of his boy, it
began gradually to lose its plumpness and radiance until at length it
was as faded and yellow as the pale half moon, and the cheeks that had
once been so full hung down on his ruff like little empty sacks. He
also withdrew more and more from the weighing house and the Raths-keller
where he had once so loved to pass his evenings in the company of other
worthy burghers, and he was heard to speak of himself now and then as a
"lonely man." Finally he stayed at home altogether, perhaps because his
face and the whites of his eyes had turned as yellow as the saffron
in his shop. There he left Schimmel, the dispenser, and the apprentice
entirely in charge, so that if any one wished to avoid the Court
apothecary that was the surest place. When, in the end, he died at the
age of fifty-six, the physicians stated that it was his liver--the seat
of sorrow as well as of anger--which had been overtaxed and abused.
It is true that no one ever heard a word of complaint against his son
pass his lips, indeed it was certain that to the very last he was well
acquainted with his son's whereabouts; for when he was asked for
news, he answered at first: "He is finishing his studies in Paris,"
later:--"He seems to have found in Padua what he is seeking," and
towards the end: "I think that he will be returning very soon now from
Bologna."
It was also noticeable that instead of taking advantage of such
questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly
and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who
thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his
truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an
elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior,
leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as
housekeeper after the death of his wife, and to Schimmel, the dispenser,
in the event of the shop being closed, a yearly stipend to be paid to
the end of their days. To his beloved daughter-in-law, the estimable
daughter of the learned Dr. Vitali, of Bologna, the old man left his
deceased wife's jewels, together with the plate and linen of the house,
mentioning her in the most affectionate terms.
All of which surprised the legal gentlemen and the relatives and
connections and their wives and feminine following not a little,
and what put the finishing stroke to the disgust of these good folk,
especially to such of them as were mothers, was that this son and heir
of an honoured and wealthy house had married a foreigner, a frivolous
Italian, and that too without so much as an intimation of his intention.
With the will there was a letter from the dead man to his son and one to
the worthy lawyer. In the latter he requested his counsellor to notify
his son, Melchior Ueberhell, of his death, and, in case of his son's
return home, to see him well and fairly established in the position
which belonged to him as the heir of a Leipsic burgher and as Doctor of
the University of Padua.
These letters were sent by the first messenger going south over the
Alps, and that they reached Melchior will be seen from the fresh
surprises contained in his answer.
He commissioned Anselmus Winckler, an excellent notary, and formerly his
most intimate school friend, to close the apothecary shop and to sell
privately whatever it contained. But a small quantity of every drug
was to be reserved for his own personal use. He also, in his carefully
chosen diction begged the honourable notary to allow the Italian
architect Olivetti, who would soon present himself, to rebuild the old
house of "The Three Kings" throughout, according to the plan which they
had agreed upon in Bologna. The side of the house that faced the street
would not, be hoped, prove unpleasing, as for the arrangement of the
interior, that was to be made in accordance with his own taste and
needs, and to please himself alone.
These wishes seemed reasonable enough to the lawyer, and as the Italian
architect, who arrived a few weeks later in Leipsic, laid before him
a plan showing the facade of a burgher's house finished with a stately
gable which rose by five successive steps to its peak crowned by
a statue of the armed goddess Minerva with the owl at her feet, no
objection could be made to such an addition to the city, although some
of the clergy did not hesitate to express their displeasure at the
banishment of the Three Saints in favor of a heathen goddess, and at
the height of the middle chimney which seemed to have entered the lists
against the church towers. However, the rebuilding was put in hand, and,
of course, the business had to be wound up and the shop closed before
the old front was torn down.
Schimmel, the gray-haired dispenser, married the widow Vorkel, who had
kept house for the late Herr Ueberhell. These two might have related
many strange occurrences to the cousins and kin had they chosen, but he
was a reserved man, and she had been so sworn to silence, and had lived
through such an agitating experience before the death of the old man
that she repulsed all questioners so sharply that they dared not return
to the charge.
The old housekeeper as she watched the deserted father grow indifferent
to what he had to eat and drink--though he had once been so quick to
appreciate the dishes which she prepared so deftly--and neglectful
of the attentions which he had been wont to pay to the outside world,
became embittered towards Melchior whom she had carried in her arms
and loved like her own child. In former times Herr Ueberhell had been
accustomed now and then to invite certain friends to dine with him, and
these guests had praised her cooking, but later, and more especially
after the death of his cousin and colleague, Blumentrost, who had also
been his master, he had asked no one into his well-appointed house.
This retirement of the dignified and hospitable burgher was undoubtedly
caused by the absence of his son, but in a very different way to what
people supposed; for although the old man longed for his only child, he
was very far from resenting his absence; indeed the widow Vorkel herself
knew that it was the father who had dissuaded the son from returning
from Italy until he had reached the goal for which he was striving with
unwearied energy.
She also knew that Melchior gave the old man precise information of his
progress in every letter, and that when her master turned over the
care of the shop to Schimmel, the dispenser, it was only because he had
arranged a laboratory for himself on the first floor, where, following
the directions received in his son's letters, he worked with his
crucibles and retorts, pots and tubes, early and late before the fire.
Yet despite this, the housekeeper saw that the longing for his son was
gnawing at the old man's heart, and had she been able to write she would
have let Melchior know how things stood and begged him to return to
Leipsic. "But there ought to be no need to tell him," she would reflect
in her leisure moments, "he must know it himself," and for this reason
she would force herself as well as she could to be angry with him.
Thus the years passed. Nevertheless, her anger flew to the winds when
one day a messenger arrived bringing a little package from Italy and
the master called her into the laboratory. Then the old withered love
suddenly came to life once more and put forth new leaves and buds, for
what she saw was indeed something wonderful; the Court apothecary held
out to her in his carefully washed hands a sheet of gray paper on which
in red crayon was an exquisite drawing of a beautiful young woman with a
lovely child on her lap. Then, having charged her not to speak of it
to any one, he confided to her that this beautiful woman was Melchior's
young wife, and the little boy their first-born and his grandchild who
would carry on the name of Ueberhell. He had given his consent to
his son's marriage with the daughter of his master in Bologna and now
he--old Caspar Ueberhell--was the happiest of men, and when the doctor
returned to him with wife and child and the thing for which he was so
earnestly searching, why, he would not envy the emperor on his throne.
When the widow Vorkel noticed the tears that were streaming down the old
man's sunken cheeks, her eyes too began to overflow, and after that
she often crept to the chest where the portrait was kept to gaze on
the little one and to press her lips on the same spot whence the
grandfather's had already worn away some of the red crayon.
Herr Ueberhell's joy had been so great that now the longing for his
son took deeper hold of him, and he lost strength day by day, yet Frau
Vorkel could not persuade him to see a physician. He often, however,
inhaled deep draughts of a concoction that he had made in the laboratory
with his son's letter before him, and as he seemed to derive no benefit
from it he would distil it again and mix with it new drugs.
One evening-after having spent the whole day in the laboratory--he
retired unusually early, and when Frau Vorkel went into his room to
carry him his "nightcap" he forgot his usual amiable and suave manner
and growled out at her angrily: "After all these years, can't you
prepare my bed for the night without making me burn myself? Must you be
inattentive as well as stupid?"
Never had she heard such a speech as this from her kindly master, and
when from fright she tipped the tray which she was carrying and spilled
some of the mulled wine over her gown, he cried sharply: "Where are your
wits! First you forget to take the red hot warming-pan out of the bed
and now you old goose you spill my good drink onto the floor."
He stopped, for Frau Vorkel had set down the tray on the table in order
to wipe her eyes with her apron; then he thrust his feet out of the
bed-which was entirely contrary to his usual decorous behavior--and
demanded with flashing eyes: "Did you hear what I just said?"
The widow, greatly shocked, retreated and answered sobbing: "How could
I help hearing, and how can you bring yourself to insult an unprotected
widow who has served you long and faithfully...."
"I have done it, I have done it," the old man cried, his eyes glistening
with joy and pride as if he had just accomplished an heroic undertaking.
"I am sorry I called you a goose, and as for your lack of brains, well
you might have a few more, but, and this I can assure you, you are
honest and true and understand your business, and if you will only be as
good to me as I have always been to you...."
"Oh, Herr...." Widow Vorkel interrupted him, and covered her face with
her apron; but he would not let her finish her sentence, so great was
his excitement and continued in a hoarse voice: "You must grant what I
ask, Vorkel, after all these years, and if you will, you must take that
little phial there and inhale its contents, and when you have done so
you must let me ask you some questions."
After much persuasion, the housekeeper yielded to the wishes of her
master, and while she still held the little bottle from which the ether
escaped, to her nose, the Court apothecary questioned her hastily: "Do
you think that I have always acted like a man, diligently striving for
the good of himself and his house?"
Some strange change seemed to take place in Frau Vorkel; she planted
her hands on her hips most disrespectfully--a thing she never did except
perhaps when she was scolding the maid or the butcher boy--and laughed
loud and scornfully: "My, what a question! You may, perhaps, have a
larger stock of useless information than an old woman like me,--though
strictly speaking I cannot be called an old woman yet--but despite my
being stupid and a 'goose,' I have always been wiser than you, and
I know which side one's bread is buttered on. Bless me! And is there
anything more idiotic than that you, the father of the best son in the
world, should sit here alone, fretting yourself yellow and lean until
from a stately looking man you grow to be a scarecrow, when one word
from you would bring your only child back again and with him the wife
and sweet grandchild, that you might all enjoy life together! If that
isn't sheer folly and a sin and a shame...."
Here she checked herself, for her habitually decorous master stood
before her in his night shirt, barefooted, and laughed loud and merrily,
clapping himself boisterously on his wasted ribs and on the shrunken
thighs that carried his thin body. The precise widow was very much
upset, she was also horrified at the insolent answer which,--she knew
not how,--had just passed her lips. She endeavored to find some words of
excuse but they were not necessary, for the Court apothecary called out,
"Magnificent! Glorious! May all the saints be praised, we have found
it." And before the worthy woman knew what he was about the gray-haired
invalid had caught her in his arms and kissed her heartily on both
cheeks. But the happy excitement had been too much for him and with a
low groan he sank down on the edge of the bed and sobbed bitterly.
Frau Vorkel was greatly disturbed for she guessed--and it would seem
with reason--that her good master had gone out of his mind. But she
presently changed her opinion, for after he had cried unrestrainedly
until he was exhausted, Herr Ueberhell gave her a prompt proof of his
sanity and returning health. In his kindly and polite manner of former
times, he begged her to set out in the kitchen a bottle of the oldest
and best Bacharacher. There he bade her bring a second glass and invited
her to drink, and clink glasses with him because the greatest piece of
good luck had happened to him that day that it was in the power of the
blessed saints to grant to mortal man. He, the father, had discovered
in Leipsic what his son had sought in vain at all the most famous
Universities of Italy, and if he should succeed in one remaining step,
the fame of the Ueberhells, like that of the Roman Horatii, would reach
to the skies.
Then he became more serious and confessed that he was very weak and
broken, and that when he had gone to bed earlier in the evening he had
felt that his last hour was not far distant. Death itself sometimes
floats 'twixt cup and lip, as has been remarked by a heathen
philosopher, and if he should be called away before he had seen Melchior
again, then must she be his messenger and tell his son that he had found
that part of the White Lion, of the white tincture of argentum potabile
or potable silver, which his letter had put him on the track of. His
son would know what he meant, and to-morrow he would write down the
particulars if he should succeed that night in finding again the
substance through which he had attained to the greatest wonder that
science had achieved since the days of Adam.
He emptied bumper after bumper and clinked glasses at least a dozen
times with Frau Vorkel, who was immensely tickled with the unwonted
honour.
After that he drew his chair closer to hers that he might better impress
upon her what she was to say to Melchior. He began by telling her that
she could never understand the full meaning of what had happened but
that she must take his word for it, he had discovered an elixir whose
effect was most wonderful and would change the whole course of events.
From now onwards, lying would be impossible, the reign of truth was at
hand and deceit had been routed from its last stronghold.
As she, however, shrank back from him, still somewhat fearful, he
demanded loftily if she ever would have dared to announce to him, her
old master, so candidly what she thought of him, as she had done an hour
ago, if she had not inhaled the contents of the phial. And Frau Vorkel
had to admit that she had been forced by some occult power to utter
those disrespectful speeches. She looked with awed wonder, first at her
master, then at the little bottle, and suddenly broke out with: "My! My
What will be left for the judges to do when everyone can be forced to
speak out boldly and disclose his smallest sin. My! My! But then we
shall hear pretty tales! From the Burgomaster down, everyone in Leipsic
will have to get a new pair of ears, for what one hears will be as
outrageous and unseemly as among the savages."
These observations showed the Court apothecary that Frau Vorkel had,
despite her want of intelligence, grasped to a certain extent the
importance of his discovery; while this pleased him in a way, it also
made him uneasy, therefore he made her swear on the crucifix that so
long as she lived she would never impart to any living soul, his son
excepted, what she had that evening experienced.
Then Herr Ueberhell went back to his search for the unknown element
which had given to his son's elixir the power that had been exhibited
in such wonderful fashion. But he did not succeed in finding the right
ingredient, for as often as he called Frau Vorkel to come and inhale
the new mixture, she gave such plausible and politic answers to his
dangerous questions that he could be by no means sure of her absolute
truthfulness. Then too the operations progressed slowly because that day
at noon his finger had been badly cut by the bursting of a glass retort.
So presently he ceased work for a while and insisted that Frau Vorkel
should take the phial in her own hand and inhale its contents once more,
because it pleased him to try the power of the elixir.
With an amused smile he asked her if she used the great quantities of
wool, which she so constantly demanded, for no other purpose than to
knit socks for him.
The phial trembled in the hand of the housekeeper, and before she could
help it her response had passed her lips:
"You have all the socks that you need and it is surely no great crime
for me to knit a few pairs to warm the feet of your assistant, that
poor, silent worm who stands downstairs the livelong day in the cold
shop."
Despite this reply Herr Ueberhell only laughed and continued the
inquisition gaily. He next wished to know who was dearer to the heart
of the housekeeper, the assistant or her late husband, to which she
rejoined "Why should I lament Vorkel? He was a bully, who never could
learn how to cut out a coat, and always stole his customers' cloth."
At that moment there was an ominous crash on the floor, and a powerful
odour filled the laboratory; the phial had slipped from the hands of the
frightened woman.
What happened after that Frau Vorkel even in her old age shuddered to
recall. How it could have been possible for the amiable and pious Court
apothecary to give utterance to such objurgations and invectives, such
sacrilegious curses and anathemas, and how she, a respectable and proper
woman, of good Leipsic people, ever could have allowed herself to attack
any one, least of all her excellent master, in such abusive language
were problems she could never solve.
Yet they must not be censured for their use of Billingsgate, for the
strong aroma of the elixir forced them to tear aside the veil which
in Leipsic, as elsewhere, clothes the ugly truth as with a pleasing
garment, and to lay bare all the rancour that filled their hearts.
Later when she thought about the breaking of the phial, the conviction
grew upon her limited intelligence that this accident would perhaps
prove in the end to be the best thing that could have happened, not
only for her but for all mankind. To her excellent master, at least,
the Elixir of Truth proved fatal all too soon; the intense excitement
of that night had shaken him so cruelly that before the day dawned the
feeble flame of his life had flickered out.
Frau Vorkel found him dead the next morning in his laboratory. He must
have gone thither to seek once more for the lost substance after she had
helped him to bed. Before he had begun his work he must have wished to
encourage himself by a glance at the portrait of his grandchild, for as
she opened the door the sheet of paper with the red crayon drawing was
wafted from the open chest, beside which her master had fallen, and
like a butterfly, fluttered down upon the heart that had ceased to beat
several hours before.
Six months after the death of the Court apothecary, Melchior Ueberhell
returned home and Frau Vorkel or, as she must now be called, Frau
Schimmel, was the only person to whom he wrote to announce the hour of
his arrival in Leipsic.
In his letter the young doctor begged her to undertake the
responsibility of engaging a man servant and a kitchen maid for him, and
of seeing that there was a fire laid on his hearth to welcome him. He
also asked "his faithful old friend" to nail up before the furnace
of the laboratory on the first floor the brass triangle which the
messenger, who brought the letter, would give to her. It was to be hung
with the face, bearing the numerals and the figures of animals, towards
the outside.
This news threw Frau Schimmel into a great state of excitement and
at the appointed hour everything stood ready for the reception of the
future occupants of the Ueberhell house.
Doctor Melchior and his family waited in Connewitz for the sun to set
that he might enter his native town after it was dark and yet before the
city gates were closed; for it was characteristic of his retiring nature
to wish to avoid exposing himself and his beautiful wife and child to
the vulgar curiosity of the people. These two had made the journey in a
litter carried by mules.
As it was just the time for the Easter fair and many strangers were
arriving in Leipsic the travellers passed through the Peterstrasse,
across the market-place and entered their newly built house without
attracting any attention.
It was too dark for them to see the statue of Minerva on the peak of the
high gable and the sun-dial on its face with the circle of animals, but
the lighted windows on the ground-floor and in the first story gave the
house a hospitable air.
Frau Schimmel who had long been awaiting their arrival went out to meet
them and the new man servant held the lantern so that they could see her
curtseys.
"May the holy saints bless your homecoming!" the old lady called out,
and Melchior felt himself choke at the host of sweet memories evoked by
this greeting--of how his mother used to fold his hands and teach him
to pray to the holy patrons of the house, of the sad hour when he had
received the news of his father's death--and to his astonishment he felt
the warm tears running down his cheeks, the first he had shed for many
years and almost before he knew it himself, he had caught Frau Schimmel
to his heart and kissed her tenderly.
Then he turned to his slim young wife, who with the boy was standing
behind him, and presented her to the old housekeeper: "The dearest
treasure that I won in Italy! I commend her to your love."
Frau Schimmel raised the beautiful Italian's hand to her lips and lifted
the little boy and hugged him. Melchior in the mean while hurried to the
entrance door, there he bowed three times and solemnly lifted aloft his
arms toward the evening-star that was just showing itself above the roof
of a house across the market-place.
The old housekeeper noticed this, and rejoiced for she thought that
Melchior was returning thanks to the holy saints for a safe journey, but
she was disillusioned when she heard him open his lips and cry towards
heaven an invocation which was neither German nor Latin, for she knew
the sound of the latter tongue, having heard it so often at mass, but a
combination of strange sounding words more like those that she used to
hear her late master muttering over his work in the laboratory, with his
son's letter before him. It was certainly no Christian prayer and her
heart sank within her. When the doctor had ended the ceremony which for
all she knew might be an invocation of evil spirits, and entered the
house with his wife and child, she went up to him and without a moment's
indecision made the sign of the cross on his breast and another on the
curly head of the child. Melchior laughed at her but did not rebuff her.
Soon the travellers were seated about the neatly laid table in their
own house and Frau Schimmel had her reward in seeing Melchior enjoy the
home-made dishes. And little Zeno--for that was the name of the Court
apothecary's grandchild--drink the good milk and munch the butter cakes
which she had baked to celebrate their arrival. But the young wife
hardly tasted anything.
Did not the food please her? Perhaps she was accustomed in Italy to a
different way of cooking? "Other nations, other customs."
But who could feel annoyed with that heavenly creature?
Frau Schimmel was of the opinion that she had never seen any one
to equal her, and could not bear to take her eyes off her. Yet the
appearance of the wife of her old favorite filled her with forebodings,
and suddenly, though she was by no means superstitious or given to
presentiments, she seemed to see Frau Bianca--so the young Italian
was called--lying on her bier, a light veil over her, and a wreath of
lilies-of-the-valley on her raven hair. A sad quiet face!
Frau Schimmel's vision must have been caused by the young wife's
excessive paleness. "White as snow, black as ebony" fitted her, as well
the beauty of the fairy tale, only "red as blood" was wanting. She was
also as tall and slender as the lilies in the little garden that the
Court apothecary had owned outside the Petersthor.
After supper Frau Schimmel helped the mother to bathe the little Zeno
and to put him to bed, and Melchior also assisted at the performance. As
the old lady looked from mother to child a great pity filled her heart
for the dear son of her late master who had staked his happiness on
a creature so ethereal that the first wind might blow her away; such
delicate perfection as that, if her experience did not deceive her, was
hardly adapted to the needs of an everyday German husband. But then did
Melchior look like such an one? No.
Again she felt a cold shiver go down her back, for Melchior had taken
the bath sheet and was holding it in front of him waiting to wrap the
child in it as it was taken out of its tub, and it seemed to her as if
he had on a shroud and his bloodless emaciated face with his black hair
and moustache looked ghostly over the top of it.
It annoyed her that she should have these stupid, sad thoughts on the
occasion of such a happy home coming!
She did her best to drive them away and the child helped her, for it, at
least, looked lively enough as it sat in the warm water, and kicked,
and splashed, and laughed, and cooed, calling to its parents and then to
Frau Schimmel. When it tried to pronounce her name, her heart overflowed
and she answered absently, for she was saying a silent Paternoster for
the health and welfare of this blessed child who somehow seemed even
lovelier than Melchior had once been, though in his time she had
considered him "the sweetest baby that had ever lived."
When the child was in bed the mother folded its hands and murmured what
Frau Schimmel knew to be a prayer, but the father touched, its forehead
and the place about the heart with an essence, speaking at the same time
some incomprehensible words. Whatever they meant, they seemed to agree
well enough with the incomparable child.
The young wife was tired after her long journey and went early to bed,
and when the housekeeper was finally left alone with Melchior, he
begged her to tell him how things had gone with his father, after his
departure.
The son of her late master had, then, brought back from Italy his
tender and affectionate heart, however stern and anxious his long and
colourless face might seem; and when he heard of the old man's longing
to see him, and death, his eyes were wet with tears.
He interrupted the course of her narrative but seldom; when she came
to his father's last hours, however, and the success of the experiment
which had been made on her with the elixir, he plied her with question
upon question until he was satisfied as to what he wished to know. Then
he suddenly stood still in the middle of the room and lifting his eyes
and arms on high cried aloud, like one in an ecstasy:
"Eternal Truth, holy Truth! Thy kingdom come!"
These words went through Frau Schimmel like a knife, and as Melchior
stood there looking up at the ceiling as if he expected it to open
and disclose to him a sight of Heaven, he seemed so great, and
unapproachable, and apart, that she feared him, though in years gone by
she had tucked his luncheon into his knapsack before sending him off to
school, and tremblingly she yielded to his will as she had done before
to his father's and swore again a solemn oath never to reveal what she
might see or hear concerning the elixir.
This vow oppressed Frau Schimmel and she breathed more freely when he
began to talk about things within the range of her comprehension, about
the details of the housekeeping, and the laboratory on the second floor
with the big furnace. He must find an assistant who would be silent and
discreet and Frau Schimmel knew of one whom she could recommend, for her
husband did not enjoy his newly acquired leisure; he had been so used to
blowing a furnace and decocting medicines that he could not give up
the occupation and consequently she could not roast so much as a pigeon
without having his grim and blear-eyed visage peering over her shoulder.
The sensible woman foresaw that idleness would soon render the old
bridegroom discontented, and Doctor Melchior, who remembered the silent
man and his skilful hands, was very easily persuaded to give him a
trial. At the back of the house there was a cheerful suite of rooms
where the housekeeper and the apprentices had formerly lived. Melchior
now put this apartment at the disposition of the old couple. Frau
Schimmel would lend her aid to his wife, for Frau Bianca understood
neither German nor the management of a German household, while from Herr
Schimmel he anticipated the best particularly as he--the doctor--meant
to devote himself at first entirely to the discovery of a remedy for his
wife, whose condition filled him with the deepest apprehension.
The new laboratory was presently the scene of the most zealous labours,
and Herr Schimmel was delighted with his new position, for no apothecary
and chemist had ever before had such a well-fitted furnace and such
delicate scales and instruments to work with; and if he did not
understand what was the end of so much weighing and fusing and
distilling, or what the remedies were that the doctor was always
decanting from the boiling liquids, yet the occupation made the long
summer days pass most pleasantly, for he had none of that love of the
open air that most Leipzigers bring into the world with them.
Since his apprenticeship, and a whole lifetime had passed since then, he
had left the apothecary shop only twice a year to take a holiday, and on
none of these occasions had he ever seen green trees, for his "outings"
as he called them, fell, according to his own wish, on the festival of
the "Three Kings" in January, and on the twenty-seventh of March which
was his saint's day, his name being Rupert.
Of the eighty holidays that lay behind him--all of which he had spent
in going to see a sister who was married to a miller and lived in
Gohlis--nine and thirty times it had rained, and forty-one times it
had snowed. In consequence of this "a walk in the fresh air" always
suggested to his mind, damp clothes, wet feet, ruined shoes, a cold
in the head, and an attack of indigestion--the result of his sister's
greasy cooking. His wife, too, preferred the inside of the city walls,
"where" as she was so fond of saying, "you know where you are."
Thus even in summer Herr Schimmel was always on hand to help the doctor,
nor had he cause to complain of being over worked, for the master seemed
as fond of a walk in the open air as the assistant was averse to one,
and when May came and the fruit trees were in blossom, when the delicate
green leaves of the beeches burst from the bud, and the oaks shed their
dry brown foliage in order to deck themselves out in young green, and
the dandelions embroidered the fields with gold and then sprinkled them
over with silver tissue, when the cowslips and daisies and violets and
their spring companions in purple and yellow appeared, and the larches
on the banks of the Pleisse turned green, when the nightingale sang and
rejoiced in the woods, then Doctor Melchior Ueberhell rarely spent a
sunny afternoon at home.
With his beautiful young wife on his arm he wandered through the lovely
Laubwald--that precious possession of the city--and though he had often
said while in Italy, where it is dryer and the foliage sparser than in
Germany, that there was nothing so beautiful as the abounding brooks and
the dense greenery of his native forests, it gave him sincere joy, that
spring, to have his opinion confirmed and to see that his dearly loved
wife cared as much for the German woods as he did.
When in their walks they encountered other burghers, all eyes rested on
the handsome pair, for if Melchior were thin, his figure was tall and
his features good, and there was a strange charm in his big, dark,
eyes that seemed to find more in the woods than was visible to others,
moreover the black clothes of his profession sat as well upon him as did
his wife's white dresses and kerchiefs of costly stuffs upon her. These
she was fond of relieving by a bit of light blue, her favourite colour.
The slim young Italian, with her bowed head and beautiful pale face
framed in its black hair, seemed like an elf who had gone out in her
light dress to dance the May dance in the moonlight and had decked
herself with forget-me-not and gentian.
Whoever saw her felt glad, for it seemed to him as if he had met with
a piece of good fortune, but no one sought to make her acquaintance,
although the doctor had not omitted to take her, soon after their
arrival, to call upon his relatives and the dignitaries of the city.
People had asked them at first to dine, but as Melchior always refused
because of his wife's delicate health, they did not press the matter;
for no one could talk with her as she understood no German, while all
who heard her light cough felt that the doctor was right to guard his
fragile treasure so carefully.
When the few matrons who visited her called upon her, instead of finding
her in the kitchen or the cellar, they found her lying upon the sofa
with a book or her guitar in her hands, or perhaps playing with her
little boy, and the amiable ones among them explained it by her pale
face and delicate air, but the severer ones said that such idleness was
the Italian custom and they pitied the doctor.
What the feminine relatives of the doctor chiefly resented was the fact
that the young couple seemed to get on so perfectly well without them.
Happiness indeed shone in their eyes, and the silent doctor seemed to
find his tongue when he walked in the woods and fields with his beloved
wife. The notary Anselmus Winckler was also loud in his praises of both
of them. He was the only person who ever joined them in their walks
through the woods, and as he had been for several years Melchior's
companion at school in Bologna, and had there learned to speak the
sweet Italian tongue, he could talk with Frau Blanca like one of her own
countrymen. He was a convivial person, and when he was in the tavern, or
dining with a friend, he would expatiate on how learned the doctor was
in all the secrets of nature and how well Dr. Vitali, Frau Bianca's
father, had known how to cultivate her appreciation of the good and
the beautiful. To hear her questions and her husband's tender and wise
replies was a pleasure unspeakable.
If the weather were fine the doctor would sometimes go out in the
mornings also, and then he liked best to take his young wife to the
Ueberhell garden outside the Petersthor, and show her what rare herbs
and fruit-trees his father and grandfather had planted, and Frau Bianca
amused herself by gathering the flowers, or helping her child to pick
the ripe cherries and early pears.
In Bologna she had found it difficult to entice her husband away from
his work, indeed her own father, his master, had held him back, and now
she rejoiced that in the new home he was willing to give her so many
hours of his time, moreover--he had confessed it to her--instead of
the elixir, which she had been taught from childhood to regard as the
worthiest object of research, he was seeking for a medicine that should
cure her.
Autumn came, and the starlings assembled on the Thomaskirche, the storks
in the village, and the swallows on the roof of the neighbour's house to
prepare for their flight towards the south; heavy storms tore the leaves
from the trees, one dull rainy day followed another, and when at last
the mountain-ash berries and the barberries were shining in all their
brightest scarlet, the rosy flush that had been coaxed into the young
wife's cheeks during the long, dry, happy summer changed to a crimson
spot, her eyes acquired a strained, longing, mournful expression, and
after she had had an attack of coughing she would sink together as if
the autumn winds had broken her as they had the stems of the mallow
which were hanging from the trellis in the little garden outside.
Then a day came when the Court physician Olearius found his way into
"The Three Kings." It was in the middle of December and straw was strewn
in the street in front of the Ueberhell house. Those who had held
aloof from the young couple in their happy hours now drew near in their
misfortune. It seemed as if the young Italian had suddenly become the
idol of the inhabitants of Leipsic, so many were the inquiries about her
condition, so numerous the friendly offers of service, the kindly gifts
of hot-house flowers and rare wines. Just as the Christmas bells rang
out along the streets of the city the joyful tidings "Christ is born"
a sharp cry rang through the rooms of The Three Holy Kings and Melchior
knelt beside his blighted flower that now was whiter even than the lily,
for the last shimmer of red had faded forever from her wan cheeks, and
he wrung his hands in utter despair.
The funeral train that followed the young Italian, who had appeared
among them like a fleeting vision of Paradise, would have done honour to
the wife of the Chief Justice.
Every one who was respectable and aristocratic in Leipsic followed her,
as well as many humbler folk on whom Bianca's glance had rested but
once. People were now so open-hearted, and seemed to wish to give to the
dead what they had withheld from the living. Hot tears were shed, for
though not one of all the mourners had ever really known Bianca, they
felt that they had lost something beautiful.
The only member of the family of Ueberhell who did not make part of
the funeral train was the chief mourner, the bereaved Doctor Melchior
himself.
Alone and tearless he paced the chamber that Bianca had occupied. He
denied himself to all who wished to see him or to comfort him, he even
refused to admit the notary Winckler.
That the flower of his life was crushed, and that he carried a
death-wound in his heart was all that he felt or thought.
Frau Schimmel began at last to fear that he too would die. If the vision
that showed her Frau Bianca on her death-bed had come true, why should
not the other one concerning the doctor? He ate and drank less than a
Carthusian on a fast-day, he offended all the good people who had shown
his wife such honour, he went neither to mass nor to his work in the
laboratory, and consequently her husband, too, was idle and threatened
to become unbearable once more.
How would it all end?
The burghers exhibited great indulgence towards him. He had received
a terrible blow, and one must forgive him for not having followed the
coffin, particularly, as nothing else was wanting that was necessary to
an imposing and expensive funeral: Frau Schimmel had taken care of that,
having arranged it on her own responsibility. When the great healer,
Time, had comforted him, then would he draw near to them again, most of
his friends thought, yes even nearer than before, now that he had lost
his invalid wife who had hindered him from joining their gay circles.
We are so willing to be lenient to the unfortunate, for a Greater than
we has visited them with sorrow such as man could not inflict.
But it ended otherwise than his friends anticipated. The Three Kings lay
there like a deserted house, and although the tall chimney on the roof
began to belch forth streams of smoke by night, as well as by day,
hardly four weeks after the death of Bianca, it was commonly supposed
that the place was unoccupied. Commonly supposed: for once in a while
the knocker was heard when Herr Winckler called, happy childish laughter
floated out from the open window, or Frau Schimmel was seen with her
basket on her arm going to market.
But no one ever met the doctor, neither at mass nor in the street, and
yet he did not always remain at home.
In summer at sunrise he went to the churchyard, and from there into the
woods; in winter, when the first stars appeared, he wrapped himself in
his black cloak and went to Bianca's grave, and thence to one of the
neighbouring villages, but he never entered anywhere, and only the
sexton who admitted him to the graveyard, and the gate watchman, who
opened the burgher's wicket to him, ever exchanged greetings with him.
At home he wandered around no longer, idle and fasting, but ate his
meals regularly, and threw himself into his work with such passionate
energy, that even the industrious Schimmel found it too much, and Frau
Schimmel grew anxious. The latter, too, knew what the doctor hoped to
accomplish by his hard work, for she had spied upon him, but she must
not be blamed as it had been with the most praiseworthy intention.
Four weeks after Bianca's death, and after he had shed many hot and
heart-felt tears, Melchior turned for the first time to his work again.
It happened late in the evening, and before he went into the laboratory
he uttered such strange words over the sleeping child that Frau
Schimmel, who was watching beside it, was frightened, especially as
Schimmel had not been called to aid the doctor, and what might happen
to the distraught man, if he were left to work alone, passed in gloomy
visions before the old lady. So she concealed herself behind the bellows
that were attached to the furnace, and there she was witness of events
that sent cold shivers down her back whenever she thought of them.
In his best holiday costume of black velvet puffed with silk he entered
the laboratory, holding himself very erect. The high, arched room was
only dimly lighted by a hanging-lamp, but when Frau Schimmel heard his
steps she shrank together till, as she fancied, she must have become
smaller and less easily discoverable. What she feared was that he might
start the furnace and she should be obliged to reveal herself because of
the heat.
But to her great relief he walked straight into the middle of the
laboratory and stopped directly under the lamp, which was suspended from
the point where the ribs of the vaulting intersected. There he waved a
fresh laurel branch towards every side of the room and called out the
same words and names that he had murmured by the bed-side of his son,
only louder and more imperiously.
To the listener it was perfectly clear that this was an invocation of
spirits, and her knees trembled under her, and her teeth chattered so
audibly that she feared he must hear her. Though she closed her eyes
tightly in order not to see the hellish brood that was about to pervade
that Christian house, fearing that she might be strangled by them or go
mad; yet the unholy creatures must have entered the laboratory obedient
to their master's call for she distinctly heard him greet one of them
solemnly.
As she did not smell any sulphur fumes nor see any dancing flames when
she peeped out from under her half-closed lids, she gathered sufficient
courage to look about her. But she saw nothing save the doctor on his
knees talking into the corner of the laboratory, where there was nothing
but the broom with which she had swept the stone floor that morning,
and the shabby old brown peruke that Herr Schimmel was in the habit of
putting on in the winter when he crossed the court-yard.
These apparitions she knew so intimately that she began to be reassured,
and her confidence once restored she reflected that either the spirits
must have held her unworthy of a sight of them and have been visible
only to the master, or else that the doctor had gone completely out of
his mind. Of her own sanity she had no doubts for her mind was made of
sterner stuff and would therefore be less easily affected.
Whether Doctor Melchior were holding converse with the broom, or the
peruke, or a spectre whom he, and no one else could see Frau Schimmel
could not tell, but she had then recovered herself sufficiently to be
able to listen attentively.
She crossed herself several times for the sake of greater safety, and
what she heard from the doctor's own mouth remained a secret between her
and Schimmel.
Not a word did she lose till Melchior went into the library next the
laboratory, and then she thought it expedient to leave her hiding-place
and hurry to her room.
Schimmel had long been in bed, and his snoring greeted her as she
entered, but she wakened him to tell him breathlessly what she had just
seen and heard.
After she had explained her anxiety about the doctor and its
consequences, she continued that the apparition which the doctor had
invoked was the Spirit of Truth. Whether it had been obedient to
the call she could not say, but, at any rate it had been no demon of
hell-God be praised--bringing a reek of the pit, and besides Satan was
the Prince of Lies and would consider himself insulted if he were called
the Spirit of Truth, moreover the spirit who had appeared to the doctor
had behaved in the most exemplary manner.
The master, too, had confessed with true Christian humility and self
reproach that he had sinned against the Spirit of Truth, to whom none
the less he had dedicated his body and soul, inasmuch as, influenced by
his great love for his wife, he had devoted himself to finding a remedy
which would cure her, and had thus become a traitor to the object of his
life.
After this he had sprung up and held aloft his hand with the forefinger
extended and sworn to the spirit that nothing here after would seduce
him from the pursuit of the elixir which was to render Truth triumphant
in the world.
Fran Schimmel described how the doctor's eyes had glowed at these words,
and how he had looked as if an invisible hand had written "Truth" in
large letters upon his forehead. He would be as certain to reach his
goal as she would be to pray the holy saints for a peaceful death.
After a long silence and much consideration the only thing that Herr
Schimmel found to say in answer to these important revelations was: "It
is all the same to me," to which his dear wife, with like brevity, and
sincere disgust replied: "You fool!"
The next morning the doctor began work afresh and with redoubled zeal.
Every drug that had been reserved from the laboratory of the late Court
apothecary was brought, mixed with the elixir and fused; and he tried
each new mixture on himself, for Frau Schimmel was not to be persuaded
to smell any more elixirs.
She, however, was more studious than ever of the necessities of the
household, and of the material comfort of the doctor and his child, and
when she noticed that her master began to cough as his dead wife had
done, she entreated him to take better care of himself, and not to
leave his son an orphan she also instigated Herr Winckler to beg him to
consider his own welfare and that of the child.
There was yet another thing that made her unhappy.
Her whole heart was wrapped up in little Zeno, and when he was dressed
in his best on feast-days a prettier and nobler looking child than he
was not to be seen.
But the doctor did not seem to have much affection for him; yet in
the evenings when the little one was in bed he went through the same
performance that had been customary during the lifetime of its mother,
and once in a while he would lift the child out of the cradle and press
it to his heart so passionately that the boy, in a fright would struggle
to get away from him and would cry for Frau Schimmel. Finally the child
became so afraid of its father that it would not go near him and this
the old housekeeper could bear no longer, so she took her courage in her
hands and spoke to her master about it.
She began by saying she had not forgotten that, according to his dead
father the saints had endowed her with a very limited intelligence, but
that she knew enough to be certain that it could be neither wise,
nor right for a man who had been blessed with such a fine son, to be
indifferent to his treasure and indeed to estrange it.
The extraordinary man looked at her with his sad eyes and answered
thoughtfully: "I demand nothing from the boy be cause I have no other
idea than to give him all I have and am. For his benefit I am seeking
something higher than the world has yet known, and I shall find it."
The lofty words silenced Frau Schimmel, but she thought to herself:
"With my few brains I am yet wiser than you. A heartfelt, willing kiss
from your child would make you happier than all the learning that you
make so much fuss about, and a caress or a spank from you--each at the
proper time--would do little Zeno more good than all the world-improving
discoveries in search of which you embitter your days and nights."
One beautiful afternoon in June on her return from the graveyard,
whither she regularly took the boy, and where she herself carefully
tended the white roses on Bianca's grave, she found the doctor stretched
on the sofa, instead of being in the laboratory as usual, and as he
sighed heavily when she entered, she asked him respectfully what it was
that oppressed him.
At first he shook his head as if he wished to be left alone, but when
she, in spite of this, remained and he noticed that her gray eyes were
full of tears, he suddenly remembered that by the side of his mother's
coffin, and more recently at Bianca's death-bed they had wept together,
then his full heart overflowed, and gasping and shaken by his cough he
burst forth with: "It will soon be over--I feel it within me, and yet I
am no nearer to the goal. All the elements of nature I have called to
my aid--all the spirits 'twixt Heaven and Earth over whom necromancy has
any power have I made subject to my will and have commanded them to help
me--to what end? There stands the elixir and is hardly more valuable
than the small beer with which the servant down-stairs quenches his
thirst, indeed it is less useful for who derives any benefit from it? I
shall quit this world an unhappy man who has wasted his life and talents
in untold efforts from his school-days until now--and yet, if the spirit
would only reveal to me the missing substance which should give to
this liquid in my hand the power that it once possessed, gladly would
I sacrifice twenty lives! Oh! you faithful old soul, you can never
understand it, I know. But this world, where lying and deceit flourish,
would be changed into a Paradise, and it would be an Ueberhell whom
mankind would have to thank for the great blessing. And now--now!"
Here he buried his face in his hands like one in despair. Frau Schimmel
regarded the sorrowful man with deep sympathy, and as it was in her
nature to try and comfort those who wept rather than to join in their
lamentations, she cast about her for something that would console him.
She had not far to seek, for there in the bay-window was perched little
Zeno, carefully picking the green leaves off a rose bough that he had
been told to gather from his mother's grave to take home to his father.
The whole stem was now bare but the white blossom at the end was
untouched, and still beautiful.
She beckoned to the boy, and in a low voice bade him rouse his father
and give him the rose from the churchyard; little Zeno obeyed and walked
straight towards Melchior; opposite the sofa his courage failed him
for a moment, but he took heart again and laying his little hand on the
prematurely gray hair of the disheartened sage said, with all the sweet
charm peculiar to a child when it speaks to comfort one who is its
natural guardian and support:
"Father, little Zeno brings you a rose. It comes from the churchyard.
Mamma sent it to you with her love."
The doctor, deeply touched, sat up suddenly, grasped the child's hand
that held out the rose to him and tried to draw the boy towards him in
order to embrace him. But Zeno, instead of answering the loving words
addressed to him, struggled and cried out sharply, for the strong
pressure of his father's hand had driven a big thorn into his finger,
and the blood from the wound was running down onto his light blue dress.
The doctor was distracted. He had hurt the one creature for whose future
greatness he had sacrificed his waning strength.
There flowed the blood of his son who had come as messenger from his
wife On her he had lavished the one great love of his life and the white
rose that she had sent him lay at his feet!
As his gaze fell upon the flower that she had loved better than all
others, and then rested upon the crying child, a great tenderness filled
his soul and for the first time he felt deep remorse that he had not
dedicated his whole life to his love. To devote the remainder of his
time on earth, which he felt would be but short, to the child who stood
there crying, seemed to him at that moment his holiest duty; yet the
passion of the investigator within him could not be subdued, for as he
looked about in search of a cloth to stanch the blood that flowed from
the boy's finger his eyes fell upon the bottle of elixir on the table,
and then on the rose at his feet and the thought flashed across him that
Bianca who had sent him the rose might have indicated to him by the hand
of their offspring the substance which he needed to achieve the object
of his life.
Of every element found in water or in air, in the earth or fire, he had
added a portion to the elixir, save only the blood of a child.
Breathless he caught the hand of his son and held it over the phial,
speaking coaxingly to him while drop after drop of the red life blood
trickled into the elixir.
Then he put the child in Frau Schimmel's arms and hurried into the
laboratory as fast as his tired feet could carry him. There he blew
the bellows so violently that the housekeeper looked at him with silent
indignation. When all was prepared he poured the liquid into a crucible,
set it among the glowing and sparkling coals and murmured strange words
and spells over the seething fluid until it boiled up and the hissing
bubbles ran over the rim of the crucible. Then he stood the hot vessel
in cold water, pronounced one more incantation over it, held it before
a mirror--the symbol of the Spirit of Truth and the emblem which she is
always represented as carrying in her right hand--and poured the liquid
back into the phial. Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, his
eyes gleamed with excitement, and he breathed heavily as he approached
his son to try the power of the new elixir on him.
But something most unexpected happened: Frau Schimmel, usually so
timid, pressed the boy's face against her breast and, her good gray eyes
flashing with her angry determination to resist, cried out "Do with
your elixir what you will, only leave me the child in peace! Little Zeno
speaks the truth without any of your mixtures. A child's mind is a holy
thing, so his mother who is now an angel would tell you, and I--I will
not permit you to misuse it, in order to try your arts upon it!"
And stranger yet! The doctor accepted this rebuff and did not even
reprove the old lady for her disrespectful opposition, he only answered.
with calm certainty: "Neither the child nor any one else is needed to
make the experiment."
He inhaled the contents of the phial himself, in long breaths, staring
for some time thoughtfully at the floor and then at the arches of the
ceiling. His chest rose and fell heavily, and he wiped the perspiration
now and then from his damp brow. Frau Schimmel watched him anxiously,
and she could not say whether he looked more like a madman or a saint as
he finally lifted his arms towards heaven and cried: "I have found it,
Father, Bianca!--I have found it!"
Frau Schimmel left him alone and put the child to bed. When she returned
to the laboratory and found the doctor in the same place where she
had left him, she said modestly: "Here I am and if it pleases the Herr
Doctor to try the elixir on so humble a person as myself, I am at his
service. Only one favour would I ask: would the Herr Doctor be so kind
as not to ask questions about Schimmel and myself or any member of the
honoured Ueberhell family."
But the doctor hesitated awhile before accepting this offer, for he had
not forgotten the defiant words with which she had withheld his child
from him only a short time before, and moreover the trial which he had
made on himself had assured him of the success of his discovery; having
inhaled the essence it had seemed to him as if the burden of oppression
had been suddenly lifted from his mind. And when he turned to the
introspection of himself, and questioned his own heart, he found so many
spots and defects on what he had hitherto considered faultless, that he
was confirmed in the belief that he had seen the true reflection of his
own personality for the first time.
Yes, he might well be certain of his success!
And yet the joy of the discovery was clouded. How often had he dreamed
of the manifold effects that would be produced by the elixir! At such
moments the hope had sprung up within him that it would possess the
power to enlighten him concerning his own nature and existence; would
enable him to pierce the veil that hides the mystery of the future from
mortal eyes; that it would reveal to the mind of man the true nature of
things, and solve the problem of life.
Yet all the questions directed to that end, which he asked himself,
remained unanswered, and for this reason he was desirous of seeing
whether the essence might not perhaps enable others to grasp the real
nature of that which until then had been unfathomable by man.
Consequently he could not resist the temptation, of letting Frau
Schimmel inhale the elixir. Then he asked her why every one who was born
was destined to die, and disappear?
To which she only answered: "Such things you must ask of the good God,
who has so willed it."
When he wished further to know how, and of what ingredients the human
blood was made, the old lady laughed, and replied lightly that it was
red, and more than that she had not learned from the "Schoolmaster with
the Children," from which she had acquired all that she knew.
Then the doctor cried: "And so my hard-earned discovery is of less value
than I hoped!"
But these words had scarcely escaped him before he smiled to himself,
for it was the elixir that had forced him to this outbreak, otherwise
he would never have confessed to any one, be he who he might, that his
wonderful discovery was in any way incomplete.
Being satisfied with his experiences for that day he no longer hindered
the old lady from going to rest.
On his own bed he lay and pondered over the limitations of his
discovery.
To reveal the truth, wholly and absolutely, was not within the power of
the elixir, nor unfortunately did it possess the efficacy to lead one
to a perfect knowledge of oneself; on the other hand it was capable of
forcing any one who used it to be absolutely honest in his dealings with
his neighbours, and that surely was no small gain. Indeed it was enough
to place him among the most famous discoverers in all ages, and to
inscribe his name beside those of the noblest benefactors of man in the
whole round world.
Sleepless, yet filled with triumphant joy, like a general who has won a
glorious victory, he watched through the night. When Frau Schimmel came
to the house on the following morning she found him with the little Zeno
between his knees.
Her suspicion was immediately aroused that the father had misused the
child in order to try the effect of the elixir upon it, and she stood at
the door and listened.
But the little bottle tightly corked peered from the doctor's
breast-pocket and, instead of questioning Zeno, he was talking to him
earnestly:
"Your mother," he was saying, "was more precious to me than life or
aught else, and you, my little one, are dear to me, too, chiefly
because it was she who gave you to me, but who knows if I might not have
sacrificed you if the success of the work, to which I have devoted so
many years, had depended upon it. Now I have reached the goal, and I
tell you, my boy, there are only two joys here below so great as to give
a foretaste of the bliss that awaits us in Paradise: one is the sweet
rapture of true love, and the other, the transport of the inventor when
his experiment is successful. I have known both."
During this speech, which the doctor had made under the influence of the
elixir, the boy stared at his father with open mouth, undecided whether
to be afraid, or to consider it all a jest and laugh.
Frau Schimmel made an end of his doubt, for she could not bring herself
to stand by patiently and have the child confused by such extraordinary
sentiments. She interrupted the doctor: "Little Zeno finds his pleasure
in very different ways, don't you, my lamb? You would rather have your
father send you to market with Frau Schimmel who buys cherries for you,
wouldn't you? Cherries are better for children than 'true love,' and all
the other nonsense that men worry themselves about."
The doctor only laughed and said "One day he will learn for himself
what his father meant, and if you wish to buy him cherries, you good old
soul, take him along with you and pick out the finest. You might also go
to the Nuremberg shop and let him choose the most beautiful horse, and
whatever else among the toys that he wishes for, no matter how expensive
it may be; for I owe it in part to my boy that I have attained my
object, and I must hurt him a bit more. But don't be afraid! He will
hardly feel it."
What did that remarkable man have in mind? Certainly, no good!
As Frau Schimmel felt that she stood in the place of a mother to her
darling, she demanded respectfully what the doctor meant to do to the
child.
He answered in some embarrassment, and without looking at the old lady;
"It is because I have need of a larger quantity of the elixir. If I
were to bleed another child--and bleeding is good for every one, big or
little--they would accuse me of practising the black arts and perhaps,
after their fashion of making a mountain out of a molehill, would
denounce me as an infanticide. Therefore the boy must spare a few more
drops of his blood, and he will do so gladly if he receives something
pretty as a reward. I am very skilful and can draw the blood without
hurting him."
When, however, Frau Schimmel clasped her hands, and Zeno, whimpering,
hid his face in her skirts, the doctor hastened to add: "There, there,
I am not going to do it at once, and perhaps it is just as well that I
should experiment with my own blood first. So take the boy out and
buy him the finest plaything you can find, and leave a message at
Herr Winckler's; he is to come to-day to The Three Kings, for I have
something very important to communicate to him."
The old lady was very glad to get the child beyond the reach of his
father. His happiness was as incomprehensible to her, as his design on
the blood of his child was dreadful, and she led the boy forth quickly.
The doctor, however, went into the laboratory with wavering steps, and
in the next half hour prepared more of the elixir into which he mixed
some of his own blood.
The effect was the same as if he had used the blood of his child.
This delighted him so much that he fairly beamed with pleasure. But even
then he gave himself no rest. He took the elixir which he had made the
day before into the library, and there he wrote and wrote.
At noon he allowed a morsel of food to be brought to him, and ate it
seated at his desk. When he had finished he continued his work with
his pen, sealing-wax and seal, until the notary, Herr Winckler, called
towards evening.
For the first time in the course of their long friendship he fell on the
notary's neck, and told him with wet eyes, and broken voice that he had
reached the happiest hour of his life, for the great work to which
he had already dedicated himself while yet in Padua and Bologna, was
completed, and that only the preceding evening he had achieved the most
marvellous discovery of all times.
One of whose effects would be that a new epoch would dawn for the
profession to which Herr Winckler belonged--that of the law.
Here his friend interrupted him to inquire what this discovery might be,
but Melchior had the force to keep his secret, and only handed over to
him the phial of the elixir, which he had previously packed carefully in
a jewel casket of Bianca's, of Italian workmanship, and then wrapped in
parchment, and tied, and fastened, with many seals.
He also entrusted his school companion with the letters which he
had written, saying that his days were numbered, and giving him many
instructions. Finally he made the notary swear to be a faithful guardian
and second father to Zeno if he should be taken away.
At midnight the friends parted, deeply moved, and Herr Winckler told his
wife that he had never seen any man, let alone the solemn Melchior, so
bubbling over and beaming with happiness, and if one could judge by the
radiance of his glance, and the fire of his youthful enthusiasm, his
friend had many more good years to live.
But what had pleased him in the appearance of the doctor was, alas! only
the expiring flicker of the burnt-out candle.
The intense excitement of the last few days had exhausted the sick man,
and before dawn Frau Schimmel was roused by his bell. When she entered
his room she found him sitting up in bed with burning cheeks and
coughing violently. He called for something to drink, saying that he was
dying of thirst.
When he was refreshed by a glass of wine mixed with water, which
in Italy had grown to be his favourite drink, he said to the old
housekeeper that he would not need to use his son's blood, as his own
was equally efficacious. He also asked her if perchance his father had
wounded his hand before he had discovered the elixir, and when Frau
Schimmel stated that he had, for she remembered the broken glass retort
which had cut the Court apothecary's finger the day before his death, he
smiled and said: "Now the wonderful fact of his discovery is explained.
A drop of the paternal blood must have found its way into the mixture.
Thus one riddle after another is solved, and soon the last mystery that
remains will become clear to me."
Then he added that having brought Truth into the world he was glad
to depart to that region where it was always day, where there were no
deceits and no uncertainties, and where the star of his life that had
set would arise for him once more.
He murmured Bianca's name and closed his eyes, while a happy smile lit
up his worn, thin face. His breast rose and fell with his irregular
breathing, shaken now and then by his cough and feverish shivering,
and often he cried out like one inspired: "Infinite labour, measureless
reward! All, all fulfilled!"
Frau Schimmel realised that the end had come. After he had received the
sacrament, the old lady laid his hand upon the curly head of his son.
Melchior gazed fondly into the sweet face of his child, and quietly
closed his eyes.
The priest who administered extreme unction to him was fond of telling
the story of this last sacrament, for he had never seen any dying man
exhibit greater confidence and faith.
Frau Schimmel cried herself nearly blind.
On the third day after the death of Doctor Melchior Ueberhell, his
mortal remains were carried to rest with great ceremony, and buried in
the place that he himself had chosen during his lifetime.
Between his wife and his mother, rose the little mound that marked his
resting-place, and later many who visited the churchyard used to
stop beside the graves of Bianca and Melchior, perhaps because of the
creeping roses which had been planted beneath the cross of his beloved,
and which spread so luxuriantly that they soon covered the husband's
grave as well as the wife's, and in the month of June decked them both
with a wondrous wealth of blossom.
In the letter which the doctor handed to Herr Winckler, the guardian
of his son, shortly before his death, he desired the notary, or his
successor, to give to his son Zeno, on the morning of his twenty-fifth
birthday, the sealed package containing the phial, together with the
accompanying manuscript.
In a second letter on which was written: "To be opened in case my son
Zeno should die before reaching his twenty-fifth birth day," he informed
the notary of the power that dwelt within the phial, and charged him to
employ it for the benefit of mankind.
Both letters--the one to Zeno and the other to the notary--contained
precise directions for the making of the elixir, and also the
recommendation that it should be sent to all universities and faculties,
as well as to the spiritual and temporal authorities of his beloved
fatherlands, Saxony and Germany, that it might become the common
property of the whole world.
To Frau Schimmel the doctor entrusted the worldly welfare of little
Zeno, and to the notary the responsibility of his education, and both of
these people not only fulfilled their duties, but gave the child a large
share of their love, so that the orphan throve both in mind and body.
That he was neither wiser nor duller, stronger nor weaker than his
school companions pleased Frau Schimmel, for as she loved to say: "Those
people over whom one exclaims when one meets them, either because of
their exceptional goodness or badness, are destined to be unhappy in
this world."
The old lady also took great pleasure in dressing the boy very finely,
and as he would one day be rich, she had no fear for his future, save
that on his twenty-fifth birthday he was to receive his father's elixir,
concerning which, loyal to her oath, she maintained silence towards
everyone.
But even this anxiety was, she thought, to be removed when one day there
was an alarm of fire, and she learned that a conflagration had broken
out in the oil cellar of the Winckler house, and that the notary's
quarters had been entirely destroyed by the flames.
But she rejoiced too soon, for only Doctor Melchior's letters to his
son and to the notary were burned, and the strange old lady could hardly
bring herself to forgive the brave and conscientious guardian of her
favourite, because at great personal risk he had saved the casket
containing the phial.
Of Zeno there is very little to tell, except that from a child he grew
to be a fine youth, with the great dark eyes of his mother, and that
he cared much about his elegant clothes, and was devoted to his noble
horse.
In his twenty-third year he became a doctor of ancient and modern
jurisprudence, in his twenty-fourth he gained admission to the famous
Leipsic "Schoppen" court of justice, and now the venerable Frau Schimmel
as well as his guardian, the notary, whose housekeeper had died in the
meanwhile, were strongly urging him to choose a helpmate for life.
As the wishes of his guardians coincided with his own in this
particular, he hastened to fulfil them, and his choice fell upon the
daughter of an officer of high rank, who had been noticeable at the
Rathhaus balls on account of the elegance of her costume.
Frau Schimmel was apprehensive, for according to her ideas, an
honourable young woman of good burgher family was better suited to the
heir of The Three Kings; yet in reality she considered nothing too good
or too beautiful for Zeno, and after she had learned from the officer's
servants that their mistress was of a cheerful disposition, and was able
with her own skilful hands to dress herself well on very small means,
and to keep up an appearance of elegance in her father's house which
swarmed with children, she came to the conclusion that Zeno's choice was
a wise one.
She therefore gave her consent to his wooing, and at the end of three
months the wedding took place with great magnificence, to the sound of
drums and trumpets. The young husband went about as if he were borne on
wings.
Surely there was no bride in all Saxony so lovely and so beautiful, and
when she refused flatly to have Frau Schimmel invited to the wedding
feast, he excused her, thinking that her refusal was the result of her
aristocratic surroundings and training. The question did not give rise
to any open quarrel, for Frau Schimmel of her own accord announced that
it was enough for her to pray for the happiness of the young couple in
church.
For four weeks after the wedding-day, Zeno continued to wonder that such
exquisite bliss could fall to the lot of any mortal in this world, which
so many people regarded as a vale of sorrow, and when his passionate
dark eyes were reflected in the cooler blue ones of his wife, and she
returned his caresses sweetly but without laying aside her distinctive
and reserved manner, which he laid to the account of maidenly
bashfulness, he felt that no one could be more blessed, and that he
was the most enviable of men. So the time passed, and his twenty-fifth
birthday was approaching. The young Frau Ueberhell awaited with even
greater curiosity than her husband, the disclosure of the contents of
the sealed package which Herr Winckler had in charge for his ward.
On the morning of the birthday Frau Rosalie dismissed the housekeeper,
whom she kept at a distance, and herself admitted the notary when she
saw him approach The Three Kings, which by her wish had been richly
decorated with stucco and gilding, and furnished with stable room for
Zeno's horse and her two ponies.
The old gentleman brought with him the parcel, as the young couple
expected and after saying that unfortunately the written instructions,
which Doctor Melchior had given him at the same time with the box, had
fallen a victim to the flames, he broke the seals that had fastened
the package for so many years, and Rosalie clapped her hands when the
beautiful casket of carved ivory mounted in gold came to view.
It was opened with great care, and Zeno took from it a paper which lay
on a rose-coloured silk pad and on which Doctor Melchior had written in
large Roman characters: "To my son Zeno Ueberhell. To be used according
to the directions found in the letter accompanying the casket,
afterwards to be given to his eldest son on his twenty-fifth birthday,
and thus always to be handed down from first-born to first-born, to the
last one, which, please Heaven, will be to the end of Time, in order
that the phial, destined to change the aspect of human life, and lead
it to its true salvation, may remain forever a priceless heirloom in
the Ueberhell family. By means of the accompanying prescription every
experienced chemist will be able to make the elixir in any desired
quantity. My blessing rest upon you, my son, and upon every
Ueberhell who, on his twenty-fifth birthday--that is having reached
maturity--shall receive this little bottle and regard it as the most
precious of all his possessions."
This inscription Melchior's son read with trembling voice, and he was
so deeply moved by the solemnity of his father's words that he did not
perceive his young wife lift the cushion from the casket, examine the
phial with curiosity, and then, having removed the glass stopper with
difficulty, hold the bottle to her dainty little nose.
But she closed the phial as quickly as she had opened for she
experienced so strange a sensation, her blood beat through her veins
so oddly, that, impelled by some inner force, and regardless of the
presence of Herr Winckler, and the tact which she usually displayed, she
cried out: "So that, then, is your inheritance! A bit of coloured glass
which one could buy in the street for a trifle, and a few brown drops
of some stuff which no one knows the use of, now that the directions are
burned."
As Zeno, surprised at these shrill notes which he now heard for the
first time, in his wife's voice, tried to pacify her, saying that no
doubt the liquid possessed marvellous properties, and that they could
not blame his sainted father because an unlucky accident had destroyed
his elucidation of them, and sought to draw her to him, she pushed him
away roughly, and answered with angry scorn: "Sainted, you call the old
man! As if I didn't know that he was a master of all sorts of hellish
arts and black magic! A fig for such saintship!"
They were bitter words, and, like one who has been wandering in sunshine
and suddenly finds himself overwhelmed by blackest night, Zeno felt
himself deprived of strength, the floor seemed to rise, and his knees
trembled.
He grasped the phial, hoping to recover himself by aid of the pungent
odour that escaped from it, and even as he inhaled the contents, light
seemed once more to flood the darkness, and very erect, and with
a dignity of which he had not hitherto thought himself capable, he
listened to Rosalie's further words.
He grew very pale, and it was with difficulty that he restrained
himself, but he did not interrupt her as, forced by the power of the
elixir, she went on to declare, that she had accepted his offer of
marriage merely because he was sufficiently presentable, notwithstanding
his humble origin, to enable her to walk or ride with him about the
city without feeling humiliated; that she had hoped and expected to find
great wealth by means of which as his wife, she could lead the life that
she enjoyed, and be able also to help her father to bring up her younger
brothers and sisters in a fashion befitting their rank; that on
the contrary she had found him only rich enough to secure her own
comfortable existence, and for this she had chained herself to a turtle
dove whose eternal cooing was beginning to weary her beyond endurance;
that now her last hope of the riches, which one had a right to expect in
the house of a magician, had vanished, and that if it were not for the
gossip of the townsfolk, she would return to her father's house.
With this statement Rosalie stopped and looked around her, frightened by
her own frankness, which she now recognized as unwise and fatal to the
last degree.
The unlooked-for and dignified reserve of her injured husband, together
with his ghastly paleness disturbed her, and her inquietude grew to
painful anxiety as he maintained silence. At length he said "I have
learned to love you truly and passionately, my wife, and now you show
me how you have returned the affection which my heart bestowed upon you.
You are right when you accuse me of having laid too much stress upon
vain trifles. For that very fault I have been most severely punished,
for had I wooed you in woollen, instead of in velvet, I should never
have had the misfortune to be bound to a woman like you. Nor was it love
that led me to you, but the miserable ambition to bring a nobleman's
daughter into my burgher home. So we both deceived each other, and
now if you wish to return whence I took you--you may leave my home
unhindered."
The young wife buried her face in her hands and answered: "No, no, life
is too miserable and poverty-stricken at home and I have suffered too
much in the long struggle to keep up appearances. And then what would
people say? No, no,--I will do everything that I can to please you."
"Very well, you may stay," he replied gloomily.
Frau Schimmel, who had been in the room for some time, turned to the
notary and said: "The Court apothecary used to say that I was stupid,
but thirty years ago I foretold what has happened here today."
She then implored Zeno to throw the elixir into the Pleisse, but for
the first time he exhibited a will of his own. He put the phial and the
document in his father's writing into his breast pocket, and tucking the
gray-haired notary under his arm, he left the room.
Frau Schimmel followed his example. Having reached the ground-floor she
stopped and, shaking her gray head, murmured: "Doctor Melchior was such
a wise man, I wonder he did not order that each of his successors should
make the girl of his choice inhale the elixir before he proposed to her.
The life I led with Vorkel, and with my second husband Schimmel, who
lies beside the first in the churchyard, was hardly perfect, but Zeno's
existence will be hell upon earth."
But this time Frau Schimmel was a little wide of the mark in her
prophesy. The two young people, for a time, treated each other distantly
and coldly, but Fran Rosalie learned to regard her husband with a timid
respect that sat well upon her. As for him he was transformed into a
stern man since he had inhaled the elixir, and his severe dress seemed
but an outward sign of his earnestness. Before the year was out a boy
was given to them, and when Rosalie saw him take the little one in his
arms and kiss it, she called him to her bedside and whispered: "Forgive
me."
He made a sign of pardon, and stooping, kissed her white face, that was
still the dearest in the world to him. Then he went to his own room
and inhaled the elixir whose properties and effect he had long before
learned from Frau Schimmel. He called aloud, as if speaking to another
person: "If she be good to the child, I will no longer make her feel how
she hurt me, though I can never forget it."
But it was not granted to him to show by his actions that he had
forgiven her, for during the night fever supervened, and before morning
she died.
Her hot hand had lain in his, just before her heart ceased to beat, and
had pressed it, as if in farewell.
Frau Schimmel followed her darling's unfortunate wife shortly
afterwards. Her death was a peaceful and happy one, for Zeno held her
withered hand, and talked to her of the days when she had dressed him
in his beautiful light-blue frocks. He closed her eyes himself, and
followed her coffin to the churchyard.
Only Herr Winckler remained to the widower, who lived alone with his son
in The Three Kings, and like a father, more than a friend, aided him in
his researches concerning the elixir.
They discovered that it produced its effect only on those who were
connected with the Ueberhell family. This was a great disappointment
to Zeno, for he set a high value upon truth, and had heard from his
father's friend what great blessings for mankind the dead man had
anticipated from his discovery. All his hopes of using it in his
profession to make hardened sinners confess their misdeeds, were
therefore, vain. For this purpose it was certainly useless and Zeno and
Herr Winckler concluded that the reason why its effect was so limited
was because it owed its power to the blood of a child of the Ueberhell
race.
That its potency extended to those who married into the Ueberhell
house was proved by its effect upon Frau Rosalie. As it had also once
vanquished Frau Schimmel, they argued that the Court apothecary must
have used other blood beside his own, for he certainly had never been
connected with his housekeeper by marriage. What had been intended to
benefit the whole world, exercised its influence only in one direction,
and on the members of one small family; this grieved the old notary when
he recalled the happy and triumphant death-bed of his friend.
The elixir had undoubtedly changed Melchior's son to an incredible
extent; from an easily-led, pleasure-loving youth, Zeno became a
self-contained man--almost a recluse--and he won for himself the
reputation of being one of the severest judges on the Leipsic bench.
High and low doffed their hats to him with respect, but he was not
popular.
After he had worked at the Rathhaus long after hours, he would go home
alone, and no one sought him out to pass an hour in his company, for
everyone feared the rough and brutal frankness of his speech. The
gregarious and friendly notary used to wince when he heard his adopted
son spoken of as "the hard Ueberhell," or "the sinner's scourge," and he
tried his best to make him more human, and to draw him within his circle
of friends.
When death overtook Herr Winckler, from whose mouth Zeno used to hear
many bitter tirades against the elixir, and Melchior's son found himself
entirely alone, and making always more enemies by his irrepressible
instinct to speak out what he thought to be the truth, he would
sometimes ask himself if it were not better to destroy the elixir,
which had brought him nothing but misery, and thus to spare his son and
succeeding generations.
But the stern upholder of the law did not feel that he had the right to
disobey the instructions of his father. And so the elixir descended
to his son, and was given to him on his twenty-fifth birthday by his
guardian, for Zeno died before his only child reached that age.
What happened to this second Melchior Ueberhell whose unfortunate
history.... Here the story broke off. The son of one of my friends had
found it in an old chest, when he was playing in the attic of The Three
Kings. It was written in a discoloured blank-book, which had escaped the
devastations of the mice and insects, because it had lain under a pile
of aromatic herbs and drugs that had probably belonged to the shop of
the Court apothecary.
Between the last page and the cover of the blank-book, which was
confided to me, I found a continuation by a later Ueberhell.
This appendix could hardly have been written earlier than towards the
end of the last century, to judge by the paper, the stiff, old-fashioned
handwriting and, more surely still, by the fact that the writer mentions
vaccination as a new discovery. Inoculation was first tried in 1796, and
three years later an institution was opened in London where a Leipsic
professor of medicine gave lectures.
This communication is signed: "Doctor Ernst Ueberhell, Professor of
Medicine." And runs as follows:
Several centuries have passed since the time of the ancestor to whom
we owe the wonderful history of the elixir as written in this book, and
preserved from generation to generation in our family.
Many Ueberhells have closed their eyes forever, since then, and even the
graves of Dr. Melchior and his beautiful wife Bianca have disappeared,
owing to the removal of the burying-ground.
On the other hand the portrait in red crayon of Frau Bianca and the
little Zeno is still carefully preserved as a most precious heirloom,
and was the picture that inspired my sainted father with the desire to
become an artist.
Our forebear Dr. Melchior devoted the best of his energies to the
benefit, as he thought, of his race, perhaps indeed of all mankind, and
yet his efforts were unavailing, for to my sorrow must I acknowledge
that much of the enmity felt towards our family, and the disrepute into
which our good old name fell, was caused by the elixir. The majority of
Ueberhells were accused of presumption and arrogance, of opiniativeness
and pugnacity. Many had made themselves disagreeable to their neighbours
by their caustic criticisms and ill-natured complaints, at the same
time bringing misfortune upon themselves by a most curious exhibition of
their own faults.
The whole race degenerated so rapidly through their unbridled license
and lack of consideration for others, that they ceased to be received
by the members of the better circles, and there came to be an offensive
saying that in Leipsic there were men, women, and Ueberhells.
This dislike and animosity were visited upon one generation after
another until finally it affected the worldly prosperity of the family.
Even The Three Kings in the Katharinenstrasse which, by the way, had
long ceased to be known by that name, was lost to us, and so remained
for many years until my sainted father recovered it again, and that the
Ueberhells did not fall into even greater distress was due largely to
the timidity, nay absolute terror, with which they inspired many people.
From several of my relatives--and they without exception made use of
the elixir when they received it on their twenty fifth birthday--I have
heard many particulars concerning the experience, but there was only one
who ever said that he had been happier and more contented because of it,
and that was my sainted father, the painter, Johannes Ueberhell.
He lost his father very early, and was brought up and educated in
poverty and distress by his good mother who remained a widow. It was she
who sold the last of the jewels and plate that had come down to her
from earlier and more prosperous days, in order to make it possible for
Johannes to go to Dresden and study under a good master.
He was a virtuous youth, with a simple heart, and a disposition so gay
that the unfortunate forgot their sorrow whenever he appeared.
Even as a child--so I have heard my grandmother say--he was so cheerful
and contented despite their bitter poverty, that he made up a little
prayer for himself in which he used to thank God for having created him.
This man, then, grew up to be truehearted and sincere without the
elixir, but he made use of it, none the less, when it came into his
possession, and it proved a great blessing to him. As a light-hearted
and modest youth--so diffident that he was timid in his intercourse with
older persons--he wandered over the Alps, with only fifty thalers in his
pocket and a small knapsack on his back, to Rome where he was
received into the studio of one of the most distinguished painters, as
apprentice. This latter very soon became jealous of the great talent
exhibited by my father and a competition occurring, exerted all his
influence to keep the prizes from the German competitors and have them
awarded to Italian artists of much less merit.
My father, unable to overcome his fatal shyness by any effort of will,
had not the courage to withstand this unfairness until he was called
home by his mother for his twenty-fifth birthday, and made use of the
elixir.
This not only gave him the resolution, but forced him to proclaim the
truth aloud, and to call injustice by its right name.
Owing to his accusations there was a thorough investigation of the
affair, a new judge was appointed who awarded the first prize at once
to Johannes Ueberhell, the said prize consisting of a magnificent
commission. Having thus achieved an opportunity of proving his worth,
he rose quickly to eminence in his profession, and came to be a famous
master while he was still a young man.
In later life also he owed nothing but good to the elixir, for his soul
was as pure as crystal, and his thoughts of others were so kindly that
he could safely speak out everything that was in his mind.
His eyes perceived only the beautiful in the universe; and the beautiful
and the true were one with him; so that he made others see and hear
nothing save what was lovely and ennobling. Whenever any debasing or
evil influence approached him he would trample upon it with all the
fierceness of a true Ueberhell; but such conflicts seldom occurred, for
his nature was so exalted that it carried him unconscious through the
depravity and pollution of this world.
Yes, my father was a happy man, and I cannot deny that the elixir
had much to do with his good fortune, for it forced him to reveal his
innermost thoughts and to show people frankly what was passing in his
mind, thus opening up to them a sunny, pure, and beautiful world which
their dull eyes would never have discovered for themselves.
Therefore the best sought him out and made friends with him, and the
more he prospered the wiser and better he grew.
One would imagine that the man to whom the elixir had been so beneficial
would set a greater value upon it than others, and would be more careful
to preserve it for his children and grandchildren. Not so.