In a fine room of a large private hotel in Broad street there sat, a
few days later, Melitta and Baron Oldenburg. A lamp was burning on the
table; lighted wax-candles were standing on the mantel-piece and on the
consoles. Frau von Berkow expected other visitors that night, and
Oldenburg had only availed himself of the privilege of an old friend to
come before the appointed time.
"It seems to me you are very silent to-night, Adalbert," said Melitta,
putting her work on the table and turning with a kindly smile to
Oldenburg. "I talk to you of the children, how hearty the boy has
grown, and how pretty Czika looks in her fashionable dresses, and you
look--well, how do you look?"
"Like the knight of the rueful countenance, most probably; at least I
feel so, from head to foot;" replied Oldenburg, rising and walking up
and down in the room.
"Not exactly!" said Melitta. "I thought, on the contrary, you looked
very well in your brown paletot."
"Jesting apart, Melitta, I am quite sad to-night."
"That is a pretty compliment for me, who have made the long trip from
my home-nest to this tedious city only for your sake--you hear, sir,
only in order to give you what I thought would be a pleasant surprise
to you; bringing you the children too. For your sake, I say; so that we
might see and talk unobserved. For this reason only I have taken rooms
here at a private hotel, like a farmer's wife; and now, in return for
all this apparently wasted goodness and love, I am told: 'You might as
well have remained at home!'"
"Do you believe it, Melitta? That thought has occurred to me really
more than once, yesterday and today!"
"That is hard!" said Melitta, and her face showed that she did not
exactly know whether she ought to take Oldenburg's words as a jest or
in earnest.
The baron did not leave her long in uncertainty. He sat down again by
her, seized her hand, and said:
"My dear Melitta, my words may sound hard, but I ask you yourself, if
I, as a man, must not think and feel so. I need not assure you, I hope,
that I am heartily grateful to you for your kindness, for you know
that; or, at least, you ought to know it. Even that you do not mind
evil tongues for my sake I do not count for so much, since I know how
little the judgment of the world is worth; I have despised it all my
life. There is something else which prevents my enjoying your presence
here heartily, and I will tell you what that is. Look, Melitta: it is
natural to man to wish to work and to care for her whom he loves; more
than that, he likes to see the beloved one in a certain way dependent
on him; I mean on his strength, his courage, his wisdom. Many a warm
affection has died out simply because it was impossible to arrange
matters in this way, and many an affection is even now fading away for
the same reason. Thus it is with my love for you. As matters stand I
can only live for you, care and work for you, in trifles; but not at
every hour, every minute, as I must do, if I am to be happy. In the
country, where we, as neighbors, could often spend half of a day
together, without being observed and watched, it was easier; and yet,
even there, the feeling of my uselessness was so painful to me that I
was grateful for the political storm which drove me to Paris, where I
could at least imagine that nothing parted us but distance. But here,
in a large city, the painful feeling overcomes me; it looks to me as if
the moment at which we meet had been expressly chosen to show that the
relations between us are unnatural and false. We are standing here on a
volcano, which may break out every moment. The soil is trembling under
our feet, and before many days are passed we shall have seen unheard-of
things. I am not afraid of the end; on the contrary, I desire a
decision, for it is necessary and will do us good. But in order to
stand firm in days when our people are going to be in trouble and in
danger, in order to be a man in the full sense of the word, I must have
peace within me and that I cannot have as long as we stand thus. I
shall have no peace, Melitta, till you are mine, till we are one; till
I know that I speak and act and fight, and, if it must be, die for wife
and child! Melitta! in your own name, in my name, in all our names, I
ask you: Will you be at last my wife, after I have served you for more
years than Jacob served for Rachel?"
The baron's voice trembled, although he evidently made a great effort
to speak as calmly and as convincingly as he could. He had bent over
Melitta, who held her beautiful head bowed low; when he paused she
looked up, and showed Oldenburg her pale, tear-flooded face. She said
in a low voice:
"Would to God, Adalbert--for your sake, for my sake, for all our
sakes--I could answer you Yes!"
"Why can you not do it?"
"You know!"
"But, Melitta, is the memory of the man whom you cannot possibly love
any longer, and of whom you say yourself that you do not love him any
longer, to part us forever? Have you not paid the penalty of your
wrong--if wrong it was to follow the impulse of a free heart--with a
thousand tears? Are you not now to me what you have always been? And,
if there must be a reckoning between us, have you not to forgive and
forget far more in me than I in you? Is it reasonable to sacrifice the
wife to a rigorous moral law, which the husband does not consider
binding? Who has made that unwise law? Not I; nor you. Why then should
you and I obey it? I tell you, the day of freedom, which is now
dawning, will blow all such self-imposed laws to the four winds, and
with them all the ordinances devised by a dark monkish prejudice to
fetter nature and to torment our hearts."
"Whenever that day comes--and when it comes for me," replied Melitta,
"I will greet it with joy. If it is a mere notion which prevents me
from falling into your arms and from saying: Take me; I am yours, now
and forever!--have pity on me, it makes me suffer as much as yourself.
But Adalbert, I am a woman; and a woman can wait and hope for the day
of release, but she cannot fight for it. And until that day comes,
until I feel as free as I must be in order to be yours in honor, things
must remain as they are now."
Melitta had said this with a low and sad but yet firm voice, and
Oldenburg felt that it would be cruel to press her further. He took her
hand, kissed it, and said,
"Never mind, Melitta! I am patient. I know that you do not make me
suffer from obstinacy. That is enough for me. And then the day of
release which you wait for, and which we fight for, must come sooner or
later."
At that moment old Baumann knocked and entered to announce the expected
visitors. Melitta passed her handkerchief over her face, while
Oldenburg advanced to greet Sophie, who entered with her husband and
Bemperlein by her side.
Melitta and Sophie met to-night for the first time, but the meeting was
free from all ceremonious formality. The two ladies had heard so much
of each other (especially Sophie of Melitta) that they knew each other
down to the smallest details of their outward appearance, and then it
was natural to both of them to lay aside all restraint when they felt a
sympathetic attraction. Nevertheless they looked at each other with
much interest as they shook hands and exchanged the first words. Sophie
noticed that Melitta appeared much milder and gentler than she had
expected from the great lady; and Melitta observed, on the other hand,
that Sophie did not look half as serious and thoughtful as Bemperlein
had made her believe of the clever and highly educated daughter of the
privy councillor. Sophie saw also Baron Oldenburg for the first time,
and she cast from her seat on the sofa many a trying glance at the tall
man in black, who stood in the centre of the room talking to the two
gentlemen. He also had never seen her before, and, on his part,
observed carefully the two ladies. It struck him that both had an
abundance of soft, curling hair, and in that feature, as well as in the
cut of their large, expressive eyes, a certain resemblance like two
roses, of which one, the darker and fuller, has entirely opened its
calyx, while the other lighter one is but just unfolding the
delicately-colored leaves to the light of day.
As a matter of course, Sophie was especially curious to see how
Oldenburg and Melitta would behave towards each other, for, in spite of
Bemperlein's assurances she had persisted in believing that there were
close relations between them. But Melitta was too much of a lady of the
great world, and Oldenburg had too much self-control, to show anything
more than a tone of perfect politeness and mutual esteem.
There was no lack of topics for conversation in those days of great
excitement, when feverish restlessness had seized on all minds, because
all felt, more or less, the shadow of the coming events. Franz was not
a politician, properly speaking. His fondness for the Fine Arts, which
at first threatened to divide his strength, and then the study of his
great science which gave him finally peace and satisfaction, had left
him little time for politics. But he was liberal in all respects, and
besides, his profession had given him frequent opportunities to become
acquainted with the wants of the people themselves, and an insight
which had convinced him of the necessity of an entire change of social
relations. He was not quite as clear about the doctrine that this could
not be done without first changing the political forms of the state,
especially because his eye was more busy with details than with the
whole. "I am at heart a Republican," he was wont to say, "but I have no
desire to hear a Republic proclaimed, because I do not believe that
that would help us essentially as long as the evil is not taken hold of
at the root. But I see the root of the evil in the dark superstitions
which reverse nature and change men from free citizens of this earth
into helots of a supernatural world."
Franz expressed himself in this sense to-night also to Oldenburg, but
he found him a decided adversary.
"I believe, doctor," said the latter, "that you attach too little
importance to the results obtained by a well-ordered commonwealth--_res
publica_, ladies, the Romans used to call it--and to the difference
between a sensible and an unwise form of government. I wish you could
have heard the discussions I have had with Professor Berger, speaking
of the sad character of a time which produces hardly anything else but
problematic characters."
"Where is the professor?" asked Bemperlein. "I had half promised Mrs.
Braun that she should meet her father's old friend."
"I cannot tell you," said Melitta; "do you know, Oldenburg?"
"No; I lost him at the meeting at the Booths from my arm, and could not
find him again in the crowd. I am quite sure, however, that he will yet
come."
"Problematic characters!" repeated Franz, who had been so absorbed in
his thoughts that he had not heard the last words. "Do you know, baron,
that when I heard that expression of Goethe's the first time it was in
connection with your name, and from the lips of a man who was once very
dear to me, and in whom you also, as far as I know, once took a very
lively interest? You need not beat the devil's tattoo on the table,
Bemperlein; I know that you, who are generally as gentle as a lamb,
have talked yourself into a most unchristian hatred against Oswald
Stein, and I only mention our former friend because he, as well as his
teacher, Berger, appeared to me always as a type of such problematic
characters."
As Franz had not the least suspicion of Oswald's former relations to
Melitta, to Oldenburg, and to Bemperlein, he did not notice the blush
which suddenly spread over Melitta's cheeks so that she bent low over
her work in order to conceal it; and the vehemence with which
Bemperlein exclaimed: "I should think, Franz, that man does not deserve
being mentioned here," only excited his opposition.
"Do you too think so, baron?" he said, turning to Oldenburg; "would you
relentlessly condemn a man whose greatest misfortune it probably was to
have been born in these days?"
"No," said Oldenburg, calmly and solemnly; "I have not yet forgotten
the old word, that we must not judge if we do not wish to be judged. I
have always sincerely admired the brilliant talents which nature has
lavished upon that man, and I have as sincerely regretted that a mind
so richly endowed should, like a luxuriant tree, bear only sterile
blossoms, which can produce no fruit whatever."
While Oldenburg spoke thus his eyes had been steadily fixed on Melitta,
who had raised her face once more and now looked as eagerly up to him
as if she wished to read him to the bottom of his soul. Franz was still
too warmly interested in Oswald to be really satisfied by Oldenburg's
words. He replied, therefore, in his earnest, hearty manner:
"I was sure you would judge Stein fairly. I have heard Stein himself
quote you too often not to know how fully you understood the peculiar
condition of his mind, and your intimacy with Berger was a guaranty for
me that you are a physician for the sick, and not for the healthy, who,
Bemperlein, need no physician. Berger and Stein are two characters
strikingly alike in talents and temper. How else could they have formed
so close a friendship, with their great difference in age?--a
friendship which, I fear, has contributed more than anything else to
develop in Oswald those eccentricities which sooner or later must lead
him to insanity or suicide."
"But don't you see, Franz," said Bemperlein, who was always
particularly tenacious in matters connected with Oswald, "that Berger
has successfully rid himself of the alp of his disease, which was
evidently more bodily than mental, and has thus shown that there is a
very different energy in him from Stein?"
"Do not praise the day before the evening comes!" replied Franz. "I
desire, of course, as anxiously as either of you, the complete recovery
of Professor Berger; but I am bound to say, as a medical man, that I do
not consider a relapse yet out of question. And if I am not mistaken,
Bemperlein, you mentioned only last night that my father-in-law had
expressed himself in the same manner?"
"But would not that be fearful?" said Melitta.
"I do not say, madame, that it will be so; I only say it may be so."
"Have you lately noticed anything peculiar in Berger?" asked Melitta,
turning to Oldenburg.
"Yes!" said the latter, after some hesitation. "I cannot deny that his
manner has seemed to me lately much more excited than before. Since the
revolution in February, in which, you know, he took an active part, he
seems to be undermined by a kind of feverish impatience, which often
reminds me of the restlessness of a lion who walks growling up and down
behind the bars of his cage. Minutes seem to grow into hours to him,
and hours into days. I have told him in vain that the history of great
ideas counts only by thousands of years. 'I have no time,' is his
invariable answer. 'If you had, like myself, wandered forty years
through the desert, you would comprehend the longing of the weary
pilgrim to breathe at last the air of the promised land. This delaying
and deferring, this hesitating and halting, will cause me to despair.'
But, gentlemen, what is that?"
All listened. From afar off there came a low but steady sound, louder
than the rattling of carriages.
"That is the beating to arms!" said Oldenburg, and his cheeks flushed
up. "I know the sound; I heard it just so on the evening of the
twenty-third of February, along the _Boulevard des Capucins_."
Oldenburg had hardly said these words, and they were all rising to go
to the window, when the door was hastily opened, and a man rushed in,
whom they found it difficult to recognize as Berger. His long gray hair
hung in matted locks around his head; his face and beard were covered
with blood, which seemed to come from a wound in his forehead; his coat
was torn to pieces, as if sharp instruments had cut and pierced it in
different places. His eyes were glowing, his breath came with an
effort, as he stepped close up to the table and, gazing at the company,
said, in a hoarse voice,
"Up! up! You sit and talk, while without your brothers and your sisters
are murdered! Up! up! With these our bare hands we will turn aside
their bayonets and strangle these executioners."
"He is fainting," cried Franz, seizing Berger, who had already while he
was yet speaking begun to sway to and fro, and now broke down
completely.
The men ran up and carried their fainting friend to a sofa.
"Some cologne, madame," said Franz; "thank you. Do not be afraid; it
amounts to nothing this time, but I fear for the future."
They all stood around the patient, whose breathing became more quiet in
proportion as the beating of the drums became more subdued in the
streets.