himself in an arm-chair, and drunk a powerful medicine presented him by
his chamberlain, Neuffer, in a silver bowl. Neuffer belonged to a family
which had long been influential in Würtemberg, honourable and patriotic.
Scarce had the Duke swallowed this draught when the deputation appeared.
He became livid with fury, and though the interview took place with
closed doors the servants without heard a violent altercation, and the
Duke's voice raised as if he were vehemently excited. Presently the
doors opened and the deputation came forth, greatly agitated, one of the
old men in his hurry forgetting to take his cap away with him. Scarcely
were they gone when Neuffer dismissed the servants, and himself went to
a further wing of the palace.
The Duke, still excited, suddenly felt himself unwell, ran into the
antechamber, found no one there, staggered into a third, then a fourth
room, tore open a window, and shouted into the great court for help;
but his voice was drowned by the band in the illumined ball-room,
playing a valse. Then giddiness came over the Duke, and he fell to the
ground. The first to arrive was Neuffer, and he found him insensible. He
drew his knife and lanced him. Blood flowed. The Duke opened his eyes
and gasped, "What is the matter with me? I am dying!" He was placed in
an armchair, and died instantly.
That night not a window in Stuttgart had shown light. The town was as a
city of the dead. Everyone was in alarm as to what would ensue on the
morrow, but in secret arms were being distributed among the citizens and
guilds. They would fight for their constitution. Suddenly, at midnight,
the news spread that the Duke was dead. At once the streets were full of
people, laughing, shouting, throwing themselves into each other's arms,
and before another hour the windows were illuminated with countless
candles.[21]
Not a moment was lost. Duke Charles Rudolf of Würtemberg-Neuenstadt was
invested with the regency, and on March 19, General Remchingen was
arrested and deprived of his office.
For once Suess' cleverness failed him. Relying on his "absolutorium," he
did not fly the country the moment he heard of the death of the Duke. He
waited till he could place his valuables in safety. He waited just too
long, for he was arrested and confined to his house. Then he did manage
to escape, and got the start of his enemies by an hour, but was
recognised and stopped by a Würtemberg officer, and reconducted to
Stuttgart, where he was almost torn to pieces by the infuriated
populace, and with difficulty rescued from their hands. On March 19, he
was sent to the fortress of Hohenneuffen; but thence he almost succeeded
in effecting his escape by bribing the guards with the diamonds he had
secreted about his person.
At first Suess bore his imprisonment with dignity. He was confident, in
the first place, that the "absolutorium" would not be impeached, and in
the second, that there was no documentary evidence discoverable which
could incriminate him. But as his imprisonment was protracted, and as he
saw that the country demanded a victim for the wrongs it had suffered,
his confidence and self-respect left him. Nevertheless, it was not till
the last that he was convinced that his life as well as his ill-gotten
gains would be taken from him, and then he became a despicable figure,
entreating mercy, and eagerly seeking to incriminate others in the hopes
of saving his own wretched life thereby.
There were plenty of others as guilty as Suess--nay, more so, for they
were natives of Würtemberg, and he an alien in blood and religion. But
these others had relations and friends to intercede for them, and all
felt that Suess was the man to be made a scape-goat of, because he was
friendless.
The mode of his execution was barbarous. His trial had been protracted
for eleven months; at length, on February 4, 1738, he was led forth to
execution--to be hung in an iron cage. This cage had been made in 1596,
and stood eight feet high, and was four feet in diameter. It was
composed of seventeen bars and fourteen cross-bars, and was circular.
The gallows was thirty-five feet high. The wretched man was first
strangled in the cage, hung up in it like a dead bird, and then the cage
with him in it was hoisted up to the full height of the gallows-tree.
His wealth was confiscated.
Hallwachs and the other rascals who had been confederated with him in
plundering their country were banished, but were allowed to depart with
all their plunder.
Remchingen also escaped; when arrested, he managed to get rid of all
compromising papers, which were given by him to a chimney-sweep sent to
him down the chimney by some of the agents of the Bishop of Würzburg.
Such is the tragic story of the life of Suess Oppenheim, a man of no
ordinary abilities, remarkable shrewdness, but without a spark of
principle. But the chief tragedy is to be found in the deterioration of
the character of Duke Charles Alexander, who, as Austrian field-marshal
and governor of Servia, had been the soul of honour, generous and
beloved; who entered on his duchy not only promising good government,
but heartily desiring to rule well for his people's good; and who in
less than four years had forfeited the love and respect of his subjects,
and died meditating an act which would have branded him as
perjured--died without having executed one of his good purposes, and so
hated by the people who had cheered him on his entry into the capital,
that, by general consent, the mode of his death was not too curiously
and closely inquired into.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] There was some idea of a younger brother being elected.
[19] In three years Suess gained a profit of 20,000 florins out of the
sale of jewellery alone.
[20] The Duke, at Suess's instigation, wrote to the Emperor to get the
Jew factotum ennobled, but was refused.
[21] On the following night a confectioner set up a transparency
exhibiting the Devil carrying off the Duke.
Ignatius Fessler.
On December 15th, 1839, in his eighty-fourth year, died Ignatius
Fessler, Lutheran Bishop, at St. Petersburg, a man who had gone through
several phases of religious belief and unbelief, a Hungarian by birth, a
Roman Catholic by education, a Capuchin friar, then a deist, almost, if
not quite, an atheist, professor of Oriental languages in the university
of Lemberg, finally Lutheran Bishop in Finland.
He was principally remarkable as having been largely instrumental in
producing one of the most salutary reforms of the Emperor Joseph II.
His autobiography published by him in 1824, when he was seventy years
old, affords a curious picture of the way in which Joseph carried out
those reforms, and enables us to see how it was that they roused so much
opposition, and in so many cases failed to effect the good that was
designed.
Fessler, in his autobiography, paints himself in as bright colours as he
can lay on, but it is impossible not to see that he was a man of little
principle, selfish and heartless.
The autobiography is so curious, and the experiences of Fessler so
varied, the times in which he lived so eventful, and the book itself so
little known, that a short account of his career may perhaps interest,
and must be new to the generality of readers.
Ignatius Fessler was the son of parents in a humble walk of life
resident in Hungary, but Germans by extraction. Ignatius was born in the
year 1754, and as the first child, was dedicated by his mother to God.
It was usual at that time for such children to be dressed in
ecclesiastical habits. Ignatius as soon as he could walk was invested in
a black cassock. His earliest reading was in the lives of the saints and
martyrs, but at his first Communion his mother gave him a Bible. That
book and Thomas à Kempis were her only literature. Long-continued
prayer, daily reading of religious books, and no others, moulded the
opening mind of her child. Exactly the same process goes on in countless
peasant houses in Catholic Austria and Germany and Switzerland at the
present day. No such education, no such walling off of the mind from
secular influences is possible in England or France. The first
enthusiasm of the child was to become a saint, his highest ambition to
be a hermit or a martyr. At the age of seven he was given to be
instructed by a Jesuit father, and was shortly after admitted to
communion. At the age of nine Ignatius could read and speak Latin, and
then he read with avidity Cardinal Bona's _Manductio ad Coelum_. His
education was in the hands of the Carmelites at Raab. Dr. Fessler
records his affectionate remembrance of his master, Father Raphael.
Ignatius lounged, and was lazy. "Boy!" said the Father, "have done with
lounging or you will live to be no good, but the laughing stock of old
women. Look at me aged seventy, full of life and vigour, that comes of
not being a lounger when a boy." From the Carmelite school Ignatius
passed into that of the Jesuits. His advance was rapid; but his reading
was still in Mystical Theology and his aim the attainment of the
contemplative, ecstatic life of devotion. So he reached his seventeenth
year.
Then his mother took him to Buda, to visit his uncle who was lecturer on
Philosophy in the Capuchin Convent. The boy declared his desire to
become a Franciscan. His mother and uncle gave their ready consent, and
he entered on his noviciate, under the name of Francis Innocent. "The
name Innocent became me well--really, at that time, I did not know the
difference between the sexes."
In 1774, when aged twenty, he took the oaths constituting him a friar.
All the fathers in the convent approved, except one old man, Peregrinus,
who remonstrated gravely, declaring that he foresaw that Fessler would
bring trouble on the fraternity. Father Peregrinus was right, Fessler
was one to whom the life and rules and aim of the Order could never be
congenial. He had an eager, hungry mind, an insatiable craving for
knowledge, and a passion for books. The Capuchins were, and still are,
recruited from the lowest of the people, ignorant peasants with a
traditional contempt for learning, and their teachers embued with the
shallowest smattering of knowledge. Fessler, being devoid of means,
could not enter one of the cultured Orders, the Benedictines or the
Jesuits. Moreover, the Franciscan is, by his vow, without property, he
must live by begging, a rule fatal to self-respect, and fostering
idleness. S. Francis, the founder, was a scion of a mercantile class,
and the beggary which he imposed on his Order, was due to his revolt
against the money-greed of his class. But it has been a fruitful source
of mischief. It deters men with any sense of personal dignity from
entering the Order, and it invites into it the idle and the ignorant.
The Franciscan Order has been a fruitful nursery of heresies, schisms
and scandals. Now old Father Peregrinus had sufficient insight into
human nature to see and judge that a man of pride, intellectual power,
and culture of mind, would be as a fish on dry land in the Capuchin
fraternity. He was not listened to. Fessler was too young to know
himself, and the fathers too eager to secure a man of promise and
ability.
"The guardian, Coelestine, an amiable man, took a liking to me. He
taught me to play chess, and he played more readily with me than with
any of the rest, which, not a little, puffed up my self-esteem. The
librarian, Leonidas, was an old, learned, obliging man, dearly loving
his flowers. I fetched the water for him to his flower-beds, and he
showed me his gratitude by letting me have the run of the library."
The library was not extensive, the books nearly all theological, and the
volume which Fessler was most attracted by was Barbanson's "Ways of
Divine Love."
In 1775, Fessler made the acquaintance of a Calvinist Baron, who lent
him Fleury's "Ecclesiastical History." This opened the young man's eyes
to the fact that the Church was not perfect, that the world outside the
Church was not utterly graceless. He read his New Testament over seven
times in that year. Then his Calvinist friend lent him Muratori's
"Treatise on the Mystical Devotions of the Monks." His confidence was
shaken. He no longer saw in the Church the ideal of purity and perfect
infallibility; he saw that Mystical Theology was a geography of cloud
castles. What profit was there in it? To what end did the friars live?
To grow cabbages, make snuff-boxes, cardboard cases, which they
painted--these were their practical labours; the rest of their time was
spent in prayer and meditation.
Then the young friar got hold of Hofmann-Waldau's poems, and the
sensuousness of their pictures inflamed his imagination at the very time
when religious ecstasy ceased to attract him.
What the result might have been, Fessler says, he trembles to think, had
he not been fortified by Seneca. It is curious to note, and
characteristic of the man, that he was saved from demoralisation, not by
the New Testament, which did not touch his heart, but by Seneca's moral
axioms, which convinced his reason. The Franciscans are allowed great
liberty. They run over the country collecting alms, they visit whom they
will, and to a man without principle, such liberty offers dangerous
occasions.
Fessler now resolved to leave an Order which was odious to him.
"Somewhat tranquillized by Seneca, I now determined to shake myself
loose from the trammels of the cloister, without causing scandal. The
most easy way to do this was for me to take Orders, and get a cure of
souls or a chaplaincy to a nobleman." He had no vocation for the
ministry; he looked to it merely as a means of escape from uncongenial
surroundings. On signifying his desire to become a priest, he was
transferred to Gross Wardein, there to pass the requisite course of
studies. At Wardein he gained the favour of the bishop and some of the
canons, who lent him books on the ecclesiastical and political history
of his native land. He also made acquaintance with some families in the
town, a lady with two daughters, with the elder of whom he fell in love.
He had, however, sufficient decency not to declare his passion. It was
otherwise with a young Calvinist tailor's widow, Sophie; she replied to
his declaration very sensibly by a letter, which, he declares, produced
a lasting effect upon him.
In 1776 he was removed to Schwächat to go through a course of Moral
Theology. His disgust at his enforced studies, which he regarded as the
thrashing of empty husks, increased. He was angry at his removal from
the friends he had made at Wardein. Vexation, irritation, doubt, threw
him into a fever, and he was transferred to the convent in the suburbs
of Vienna, where he could be under better medical care. The physician
who attended him soon saw that his patient's malady was mental. Fessler
opened his heart to him, and begged for the loan of books more feeding
to the brain than the mystical rubbish in the convent library. The
doctor advised him to visit him, when discharged as cured from the
convent infirmary, instead of at once returning to Schwächat. This he
did, and the doctor introduced him to two men of eminence and influence,
Von Eybel and the prelate Rautenstrauch, a Benedictine abbot, the
director of the Theological Faculties in the Austrian Monarchy. This
latter promised Fessler to assist him in his studies, and urged him to
study Greek and Hebrew, also to widen the circle of his reading, to make
acquaintance with law, history, with natural science and geography, and
undertook to provide him with the requisite books.
On his return to Schwächat, Fessler appealed to the Provincial against
his Master of Studies whom he pronounced to be an incompetent pedant. At
his request he was moved to Wiener-Neustadt. There he found the lecturer
on Ecclesiastical Studies as superficial as the man from whom he had
escaped. This man did not object to Fessler pursuing his Greek and
Hebrew studies, nor to his taking from the library what books he liked.
The young candidate now borrowed and devoured deistical works, Hobbes,
Tindal, Edelmann, and the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. He had to be careful
not to let these books be seen, accordingly he hid them under the floor
in the choir. After midnight, when matins had been sung, instead of
returning to bed with the rest, he remained, on the plea of devotion, in
the church, seated on the altar steps, reading deistical works by the
light of the sanctuary lamp, which he pulled down to a proper level. He
now completely lost his faith, not in Christianity only, but in natural
religion as well. Nevertheless, he did not desist from his purpose of
seeking orders. He was ordained deacon in 1778, and priest in 1779. "On
the Sunday after Corpus Christi, I celebrated without faith, without
unction, my first mass, in the presence of my mother, her brother, and
the rest of my family. They all received the communion from my hand,
bathed in tears of emotion. I, who administered to them, was frozen in
unbelief."
The cure of souls he desired was not given him, no chaplaincy was
offered him. His prospect of escape seemed no better than before. He
became very impatient, and made himself troublesome in his convent. As
might have been suspected, he became restive under the priestly
obligations, as he had been under the monastic rule. It is curious that,
late in life, when Fessler wrote his memoirs, he showed himself blind to
the unworthiness of his conduct in taking on him the most sacred
responsibilities to God and the Church, when he disbelieved in both. He
is, however, careful to assure us that though without faith in his
functions, he executed them punctually, hearing confessions, preaching
and saying mass. But his conduct is so odious, his after callousness so
conspicuous, that it is difficult to feel the smallest conviction of his
conscientiousness at any time of his life.
As he made himself disagreeable to his superiors at Neustadt, he was
transferred to Mödling. There he made acquaintance with a Herr Von
Molinari and was much at his house, where he met a young Countess
Louise. "I cannot describe her stately form, her arching brows, the
expression of her large blue eyes, the delicacy of her mouth, the music
of her tones, the exquisite harmony that exists in all her movements,
and what affects me more than all--she speaks Latin easily, and only
reads serious books." So wrote Fessler in a letter at the time. He read
Ovid's Metamorphoses with her in the morning, and walked with her in the
evening. When, at the end of October, the family went to Vienna, "the
absence of that noble soul," he wrote, "filled me with the most poignant
grief." The Molinari family were bitten with Jansenism, and hoped to
bring the young Capuchin to their views. Next year, in the spring of
1781, they returned to Mödling.
"This year passed like the former; in the convent I was a model of
obedience, in the school a master of scholastic theology: in Molinari's
family a humble disciple of Jansen, in the morning a worshipper of the
muse of Louise, in the evening an agreeable social companion,"--in
heart--an unbeliever in Christianity.
A letter written to an uncle on March 12th, 1782, must be quoted
verbatim, containing as it does a startling discovery, which gave him
the opportunity so long desired, of breaking with the Order:--
"Since the 23rd February, I sing without intermission after David, in my
inmost heart, 'Praise and Glory be to God, who has delivered my enemies
into my hand!' Listen to the wonderful way in which this has happened.
On the night of the 23rd to 24th of February, after eleven o'clock, I
was roused from sleep by a lay-brother. 'Take your crucifix,' said he
'and follow me.'
"'Whither?' I asked, panic struck.
"'Whither I am about to lead you.'
"'What am I to do?'
"'I will tell you, when you are on the spot.'
"'Without knowing whither I go, and for what purpose, go I will not.'
"'The Guardian has given the order; by virtue of holy obedience you are
bound to follow whither I lead.'
"As soon as holy obedience is involved, no resistance can be offered.
Full of terror, I took my crucifix and followed the lay-brother, who
went before with a dark lantern. Passing the cell of one of my fellow
scholars, I slipped in, shook him out of sleep, and whispered in Latin
twice in his ear, 'I am carried off, God knows whither. If I do not
appear to-morrow, communicate with Rautenstrauch.'
"Our way led through the kitchen, and beyond it through a couple of
chambers; on opening the last, the brother said, 'Seven steps down.' My
heart contracted, I thought I was doomed to see the last of day-light.
We entered a narrow passage, in which I saw, half way down it, on the
right, a little altar, on the left some doors fastened with padlocks. My
guide unlocked one of these, and said, 'Here is a dying man, Brother
Nicomede, a Hungarian, who knows little German, give him your spiritual
assistance. I will wait here. When he is dead, call me.'
"Before me lay an old man on his pallet, in a worn-out habit, on a straw
palliasse, under a blanket; his hood covered his grey head, a snow-white
beard reached to his girdle. Beside the bedstead was an old
straw-covered chair, a dirty table, on which was a lamp burning. I spoke
a few words to the dying man, who had almost lost his speech; he gave me
a sign that he understood me. There was no possibility of a confession.
I spoke to him about love to God, contrition for sin, and hope in the
mercy of heaven; and when he squeezed my hand in token of inward
emotion, I pronounced over him the General Absolution. The rest of the
while I was with him, I uttered slowly, and at intervals, words of
comfort and hope of eternal blessedness. About three o'clock, after a
death agony of a quarter-of-an-hour, he had passed out of the reach of
trouble.
"Before I called the lay-brother, I looked round the prison, and then
swore over the corpse to inform the Emperor of these horrors. Then I
summoned the lay-brother, and said, coldly, 'Brother Nicomede is gone.'
"'A good thing for him, too,' answered my guide, in a tone equally
indifferent.
"'How long has he been here?'
"'Two and fifty years.'
"'He has been severely punished for his fault.'
"'Yes, yes. He has never been ill before. He had a stroke yesterday,
when I brought him his meal.'
"'What is the altar for in the passage?'
"'One of the fathers says mass there on all festivals for the lions, and
communicates them. Do you see, there is a little window in each of the
doors, which is then opened, and through it the lions make their
confession, hear mass, and receive communion.'
"'Have you many lions here?'
"'Four, two priests and two lay-brothers to be attended on.'
"'How long have they been here?'
"'One for fifty, another for forty-two, the third for fifteen, and the
last for nine years.'
"'Why are they here?'
"'I don't know.'
"'Why are they called lions?'
"'Because I am called the lion-ward.'
"I deemed it expedient to ask no more questions. I got the lion-ward to
light me to my cell, and there in calmness considered what to do.
"Next day, or rather, that same day, Feb. 24th, I wrote in full all that
had occurred, in a letter addressed to the Emperor, with my signature
attached. Shortly after my arrival in Vienna I had made the acquaintance
of a Bohemian secular student named Bokorny, a trusty man. On the
morning of Feb. 25th, I made him swear to give my letter to the Emperor,
and keep silence as to my proceeding.
"At 8 o'clock he was with my letter in the Couriers' lobby of the
palace, where there is usually a crowd of persons with petitions
awaiting the Emperor. Joseph took my paper from my messenger, glanced
hastily at it, put it apart from the rest of the petitions, and let my
messenger go, after he had cautioned him most seriously to hold his
tongue.
"The blow is fallen; what will be the result--whether anything will come
of it, I do not yet know."
For many months no notice was taken of the letter. It was not possible
for the Emperor to take action at once, for a few days later Pius VI.
arrived in Vienna on a visit to Joseph.