They were gone; but he knew neither who they were nor what they were to
become to him. There, near the stove, stood the table at which they had
sat, and the landlady put the coffee on it and pushed up a chair for
Hans Unwirrsch. The landlord came back from his morning tour through
the yard and garden and brought him a last greeting from the two
travelers. They were gone.
Before Hans drank his coffee he looked once more through the window out
upon the street. No sign of them there any more.
"That was a gallant old gentleman," said the landlord, and the landlady
said: "Poor young lady! I should really like to know what is the matter
with her; my Mary, who slept in the room next hers, heard her crying
all night long. She must have known much sorrow in her young life."
Hans came back from the window, sat down on the chair on which he had
sat the evening before and looked at the two empty chairs. He began to
go over in his mind every word that had been spoken the day before.
"And he doesn't write to me--I don't know his address--I can't ask him
what he did to hurt the young lady. It's like a dream. Oh Moses, Moses!"
They were gone, and the wind too had subsided. The sky was almost
grayer than the day before but there was not a breath of air stirring
now.
"It was a strange meeting after all! If I had only seen the lieutenant
once more.... And the burden on my shoulders is so heavy without this!
Oh, what wouldn't I give if I only knew Moses' address!"
The innkeeper, feeling obliged to cheer his guest up, told him all the
remarkable, funny and sad occurrences of the little place, but Hans
could only listen with half an ear;--they were gone, and finally he
too could no longer endure the heavy atmosphere of the inn parlor. He
felt that he must also get away, must breathe some fresh air. So he
paid his bill and went, accompanied by the best wishes and blessings
of the Post-horn. He strode through the sleepy place without looking
to the right or to the left; not until he was out on the country road
again did he look up and about him and almost wished for the wind of
yesterday. Then there had at least been life, even though it had been
weird; but today every bare furrow cried: the great Pan is dead!--and
full of mourning the clouds hung low over the lifeless earth. It was
fortunate for the wanderer that the way behind the next village led
into an extensive forest of fir-trees. Even though it was still darker
there than between the open fields, yet the fresh smell of the balsam
strengthened him in mind and soul. In this wood Hans Unwirrsch at least
left behind him his disquieting thoughts of the friend of his youth,
for when he once more stepped forward out of the dusk of the forest
the hills behind which his native town lay rose against the horizon
and from now on everything had to recede before the vision of his sick
mother, even the image of the lovely young lady who had sat opposite
him the evening before.
Hans Unwirrsch wandered on without stopping; he would not allow himself
another rest. An irresistible power within him drove him forward; by
two o'clock in the afternoon he stood at the edge of the wood from
which one can see Neustadt lying at one's feet.
"Oh Mother, Mother!" sighed Hans stretching out his hands toward the
town. "I am coming, I am coming. I went forth with great hope and I am
coming home in great pain and with many doubts. Oh dear, dear Mother,
will you too forsake your child? You couldn't do that. Oh, why did
I not stay down there, why did I let myself be lured away over this
mountain and forest by a mistaken, false yearning! What am I bringing
home that for you and me could take the place of that lost peace and
happiness in which my father passed his days?"
And now the terrible thought came to him that his mother might be dying
while he delayed there and he ran down the hill till he was out of
breath and, while walking at a more moderate pace, he collected himself
again.
Now he walked through the old gate and now through the streets of the
town. From more than one window people looked after him, more than one
acquaintance met and greeted him; but he could pay no attention to
anyone. He was in Kröppel Street; he stood before the paternal house;
he knelt beside his mother's bed and did not know whether a moment, a
minute or a century had passed since that second when he stood at the
edge of the woods. Nor could he give any account of what was said in
the first few moments of his homecoming. Perhaps nothing was said at
all.
Now he read his mother's frightful sufferings in her face and worn
features, and wept bitterly. Then he whispered to her that he was
there, that he would never go away again, and that she must not leave
him either. And then, in a faint voice, the sick woman tried to soothe
him and he felt a hand on his shoulder and finally raised himself up.
Auntie Schlotterbeck stood behind him; she had not changed at all and
gently she reminded him that he must control himself and must not
excite his mother too much.
There was Uncle Grünebaum too, very gentle and reticent; Uncle
Grünebaum who knew that there is a time for everything and that
everything must be regarded and treated and discussed in the proper
manner.
Hans now shook hands with Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle Grünebaum
and they both talked to him comfortingly and soothingly. He looked
round him again in the low, dark, shabby room and in spite of all his
grief and all his pain he felt a calm, an assurance which, during his
torturing journey, he thought he had lost forever.
And now Uncle Grünebaum prepared to express his feelings in a well
considered speech; but Auntie Schlotterbeck interfered after his
preliminary clearing of the throat and half persuasively, half forcibly
led him out of the door so that all he could do was to call back over
his shoulder:
"Don't excite her, Hans. Be humane with her; behave like a filial son
and composed mind, the doctor has given us strict orders."
As soon as the mother and son were alone the mother said:
"You must forgive me, Hans, that I had you called away from your work;
but I had such a great yearning for you I could not help it. You have
always been my comfort; you must be it now too. I longed for you so
much."
"Oh Mother, dear Mother," cried Hans Unwirrsch, "don't talk as if my
happiness and welfare were more important than yours. Oh, if you only
knew how gladly I would give everything that I have gained by my work
while away if I could only spare you the smallest part of your pain!
But you will grow better, you will soon be well again. Oh Mother, you
don't know how much I need you; no wisdom that can be taught on earth
can give what a mother's word and look gives us."
"Just hear the boy," cried Frau Christine. "Does he want to make fun of
the old washerwoman. Such a learned gentleman! But never mind, Hans.
Hans, do you know that you are growing more and more like your sainted
father! He behaved just like that if the sun went behind the clouds
for a little while. He was a scholar too, even if he hadn't been to
the university and I often had to wonder at the man. One day he would
be as high in the air as a lark and the next day he would creep along
the earth like a snail. You will mount up into the blue sky again,
Hans, don't worry about me; I have nothing to reproach God with, he has
meant well with me; he has given me a happy life and he cannot help the
burden that he now lays upon me; that is everyone's lot and no one can
escape it."
Hans felt much humiliated at the bedside of this poor, simple woman
who had to endure such tortures and yet could speak and comfort so
heroically. Even though his grief at the loss which threatened him grew
more violent, his weak despondency of the last few days disappeared.
He felt sure on his feet again, his true, real sorrow gave him back
his inner self-control; in his profession he separated the real, the
content from the non-essential, and for the first time really applied
it to life. These difficult days had a deeper effect upon him than all
the days he had spent in lecture rooms or in only half fruitful study.
He now stepped out of the unwholesome spell of flattering, enervating
imaginings, and dull, heavy broodings into real life; he did not lose
his hunger for the ideal, the transcendental, but to it was now added
hunger for the real, and the fusing of both, which took place in such
solemn hours, could not but produce a good cast.
He arranged a table for his work at his dying mother's bedside. There
he sat and wrote and, at the same time, watched the sick woman's
slumber. The consistory had given him his examination themes; he began
to work at them with an eagerness which he had believed was quite dead
in him. It was a strange, sadly happy time.
What a light Master Anton's glass globe cast across the table and
through the room in the evening and at night! Never before and never
afterwards did it shed such a lustre.
Frau Christine saw her whole life in its glow as in a magic mirror.
She saw herself as a child, as a young girl, and felt as one. Her
parents and her parents' parents came and went; she saw them as clearly
and as vividly as Auntie Schlotterbeck herself might have seen them.
She thought of the games she played as a child and of all her girl
friends, and the light of the globe was like moonlight, sunrise and
sunset, or like high noon. The sick woman had forgotten so much and now
suddenly it all came back to her and no part of it was lost,--it was
really amazing. She often had to close her eyes because the figures
and varied scenes of that distant time passed before her in too
great abundance;--now for the first time she realized how much, how
infinitely much she had experienced in her life after all. Her Anton
had often complained that he had to sit so quiet and so surrounded
by dusk and that he couldn't bear to think of all the people who
journeyed over hill and dale and across the wide ocean and of those
who discovered strange countries and of all the tumult and bustle that
there was in the world;--Frau Christine thought of these complaints
as she lay on her bed of pain, nodded and shook her head and smiled.
Foolish Anton, had he not had enough turmoil and excitement in his
life? Had there not been plenty of happenings in it? There was their
wedding day, for instance, when Christine had danced for the last time
as a girl and Anton had looked so stately in his wedding clothes. Had
that not been a bright bit of life and a greater thing than to sail
across the seas to outlandish places? And what had they not lived
through in the time of the French wars, when Anna, to whom Brother
Nik'las had nearly become engaged, had gone off with the Hussars? That
had been in 1806 and it really seemed queer to think of how troubled
Anton had been about the hard times and of how nobody thought of the
French now any more than Brother Nik'las thought of Anna. There was
Auntie Schlotterbeck who had lived through all these things and who
could see the dead; but still she could not command all the memories
that Frau Christine could, for she had never borne a child and had no
son to grow up and sit at the table, a learned man, and send glances to
her across his books. Oh, how much, how much one could think of by the
light of the magic globe; it made it really easy, even when the pain
was at its worst, to lie quiet and to wait patiently for the last hour!
We described at the beginning how Hans, as a little child, lay in his
bed in the winter night and watched his mother get ready for her early
work. We spoke of the strange, mysterious pictures his fancy drew of
the places to which she went, of how he saw the shadows dancing on
the walls and watched carefully to see what became of them when the
lamp was blown out. Now, as a grown man, he was compelled to give way
to very similar and yet quite different feelings. He had had some
experiences and had learnt much; it would have been no wonder if he had
entered into these hours with more mature moods; but just as his mother
was surprised at the return of the memories of her youth, so too he had
reason to wonder at the return of these feelings.
While he turned over the pages of his books by the light of the glass
globe and from time to time looked over at the sick woman's bed he
thought of how his mother was now again preparing to go away and leave
him alone in the dark. Just as then he had often begged her with tears
to stay, so he would have liked to beg her now. Often the great fear
came over him which he had felt such long years before when the lamp
had been blown out, his mother's step had died away and sleep did not
immediately close his eyes. He heard the snow trickling down the window
as he had heard it then; the night watchman called the hours, the
moonlight glimmered through the frozen panes, the old furniture cracked
and creaked as it used to, the nocturnal world stirred in ghostly
fashion as then.
If his mother was sleeping in such moments he could escape from the
fearful throng of feelings only by working on as hard as possible at
the most difficult parts of his task and even this did not always bring
relief. But if his mother was awake he only needed to lay down his pen
and to take her faithful hand in his: then the comfort he received was
the best there could be for him. If there was anything that later
influenced his acts, his plans, his views and his whole life it was the
soft words that were whispered to him in such hours.
"See, dear child," said the old woman, "in my poor mind it has always
seemed to me that the world would not amount to much if there were no
hunger in it. But it must not be only the hunger for food and drink
and a comfortable life, no, I mean a very different thing from that.
There was your father, he had the kind of hunger that I mean and it is
from him that you have inherited it. Your father too was not always
satisfied with himself and with the world; not that he was envious
because others lived in more beautiful houses, or drove in carriages,
or anything like that; no, he was only troubled because there were so
many things which he did not understand and which he would have liked
so much to learn about. That is a man's hunger, and if a man has it
and at the same time does not entirely forget those whom he ought to
love, then he is a real man, whether he gets on well or not--that makes
no difference. But woman's hunger lies in another direction. First of
all it is for love. A man's heart must bleed for light, but a woman's
heart must bleed for love. It is in this that she must find her joy. Oh
child, I have been much better off than your father, for I have been
able to give much love, and much, much love has fallen to my share. He
was so good to me as long as he lived, and then, I have had you, and
now when I am going to follow my Anton you sit beside me and what he
wanted to have you have got and I have helped you to get it; isn't that
enough to make me very happy? You must not grieve so about your foolish
mother or you will make my heart heavy and I know you don't want to do
that, you never have done it."
The son buried his face in the sick woman's pillows; he could not
speak, he could only repeat the word, Mother! sobbingly, but all the
emotion that moved him was expressed in it.
During his stay in Neustadt at that time Hans Unwirrsch seldom left
the house. He greeted all the neighbors in Auntie Schlotterbeck's room,
but he himself paid few visits. Wherever he did appear, however, he
was gladly received and Professor Fackler held him so fast that he had
finally to tear himself away with force.
Oddly enough the Professor was now greatly interested in Dr. Moses
Freudenstein and questioned poor, disturbed Hans most closely about him.
"So the Talmudistic hair-splitter has gone to Paris? I can tell you,
Unwirrsch, that boy gave me more embarrassment while he was at school
than I cared to show. We can talk about it now: his objections and
conclusions, the way he played with questions and answers often drove
the sweat of fear out on my forehead. Truly one could not say: _Credat
Judæus Apella_,--that promising youth was not so credulous! With his
appetite for all the good things of this world he'll make his way,
there is no doubt about that, Unwirrsch. I can tell you, the greatest
thing is the right kind of hunger; in monks' Latin--the gods of Latium
protect us--we might say: _Fames--famositas_, Ha! Ha! Well, God bless
you, Johannes, and give you strength to bear your sorrow at home. We
have the greatest sympathy for you and if we can be useful to you in
any way just come to me or to my wife. Eheu, after all, in spite of all
good things, life is a vale of tears!"
To what this last sigh referred is not quite clear to us although it
was so to Hans Unwirrsch, who firmly believed that it was occasioned by
his mother's illness, and so, deeply touched, he took leave, for the
time being, of the good professor.
During this time Uncle Grünebaum of course often found the opportunity
to show himself in all his greatness. He came and went constantly
and the house in Kröppel Street was not safe from him for a minute.
Now he appeared in the door so suddenly that the sick woman started
in her bed, now his dignified head darkened the window beside Hans'
writing table so suddenly that the young man jumped up startled from
his seat to gaze at the apparition. If it had not been for Auntie
Schlotterbeck Uncle Grünebaum would have become a nuisance, but the
thoughtful soul finally organized a regular watch service and more than
one child in Kröppel Street received orders to give a warning sign
when Master Grünebaum turned the corner. When the alarm sounded Auntie
Schlotterbeck always went and stood at the door to intercept the uncle
and send him home again by means of cunning, or sometimes to lead him
into her own little room. And thither Hans was then ordered to receive
his uncle's words of consolation and advice.
"So she is still no better? So sorry, it's too bad! But that's the way
it goes in the world and if one man has to complain of his tobacco, the
other has trouble with his pipe. We all have to come to this thing; but
it has a curious way about it. Now, there sits Auntie Schlotterbeck, a
worn-out, miserable person, nothing but bones in a leather sack and,
if you won't take it amiss, my saying so, Mistress Schlotterbeck, for
the last twenty years I have thought from day to day that you would
go out like a tallow candle. But now, there lies my sister, who was
a remarkably robust woman, near to death, and you, Auntie, you keep
on glimmering as if it were a matter of course and after all, perhaps
you'll outlive even me and see me running round in the streets as a
spirit in a white shirt and with three pairs of old boots under each
arm. I'm ready to believe anything of you now. Oh dear, dear, Hans,
what is man? What does he not have to endure in his life? Such great
hunger----"
"And such very great thirst," threw in Auntie Schlotterbeck.
"That too, Miss Schlotterbeck," continued Uncle Grünebaum with
dignity, though not without showing some annoyance. "Such great hunger
and--thirst, that no angel who has not tried it would believe. What
does a man do when he has come to his years of discretion?"
"Sometimes he takes to drinking," grunted Auntie Schlotterbeck.
"He hungers and desires everything that hangs too high for him,"
snarled Uncle Grünebaum furiously. "Whoever asks too much deserves to
get nothing; but whoever asks little certainly will get nothing at all.
There was your father, boy; he had the most ludicrous kind of hunger
and he asked too much as well; he wanted to be a cobbler and a scholar
at the same time. What came of it? Nothing! Now, here is your dear
Uncle Nik'las, who was gifted with too great modesty and asked nothing
but his daily bread----"
"And the Red Ram and the political newspaper!" interposed Auntie
Schlotterbeck again. "And as he liked to sit in the Red Ram better
than on his work stool and as he liked better to whistle to his birds
than to work and as he read the _Post Courier_ in preference to the
hymn-book, he comes here now and asks, what came of it and then
actually wonders if the answer is again: nothing."
"Miss Schlotterbeck," replied Uncle Grünebaum, "you may impress some
poor donkey that comes along, but can't impress me. I have enough
of you for this time and I wish you good evening. It's enough to
make me foreswear all Kröppel Street! Go to your mother, Hans, give
her my love and my excuses that I could not see her this time, on
account of excitement and inadequate self-control. I thank you, Auntie
Schlotterbeck, for your pleasant entertainment and wish you, if it is
possible, a clear conscience and a good night's rest!"
During this sad time Auntie Schlotterbeck surrounded Hans with even
more love and solicitous attention than usual, if that were possible.
The supernatural element that was mixed with her consolation could
not disturb him. These apparitions of the dead of which she spoke
as of something real, had nothing fearful about them, nothing
confusing;--Hans Unwirrsch could sit for hours and listen to Auntie
Schlotterbeck telling his sick mother about her visions and see his
mother nod at the mention of some detail and remember something long
past and forgotten.
Auntie Schlotterbeck saw good Master Anton very frequently at that
time, and the sick woman's worst pains were alleviated when Auntie
Schlotterbeck told her about him.
It was a very severe winter. Neither Auntie Schlotterbeck nor Frau
Christine, both of whom had lived through so many winters, remembered
one like it. When Hans, half against his will, went out for a walk to
get a breath of fresh air, he felt as though everything that lay round
him would remain forever so cold and dead, so bleak and bare, as if it
were impossible that in a few weeks the trees would grow green again.
More than once he mechanically broke off a twig, carefully to unroll
the brown leaves of the bud and to assure himself that spring was
really only asleep and not dead.
But the snow melted in good time and the waters triumphantly broke
their fetters. Hans Unwirrsch completed his work and one evening laid
down his pen, stepped softly to his mother's bed and, bending down to
kiss her, whispered:
"Dear Mother, I hope that I have succeeded."
At that his mother drew her son's head down to her with both her sick
hands and kissed him too. Then she pushed him gently away and folded
her hands. She moved her lips but Hans could not understand everything
that she said. He heard only the last words.
"We have managed to do it, Anton! Now I can come to you!"
At the beginning of the new spring the Sunday came on which Hans was
to preach his examination sermon. It was a day on which the sun shone
again.
A glass of snowdrops stood beside the sick woman's bed and the church
bells had never sounded more solemn than on that day. The son, in his
black gown, bent over his mother and she laid her hand on his young
head and looked at him with smiling, shining eyes. Johannes Unwirrsch
looked deep, deep into those eyes which said more than a hundred
thousand words would have said; then he went and Auntie Schlotterbeck
and his Uncle followed him. His mother wished it to be so, she wanted
to be alone.
There she lay still, and had no more pain. In thought she followed
her child through the streets, across the market-place, across the
old churchyard to the low door of the sacristy. She heard the organ
and closed her eyes. Once more only did she open them wonderingly and
look at the glass globe over the table; it seemed to her as if it had
suddenly given forth a clear tone and as if she had been awakened by
the sound. She smiled and closed her eyes again, and then--
And then? No one can say what followed then; but when Hans Unwirrsch
came home from the church his mother was dead and all who saw her said
that she must have had a happy death.
SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS XIII, XIV, XV AND XVI
[As she had desired, Frau Christine was buried beside her husband.
Those of her belongings that Hans wanted to keep Auntie Schlotterbeck
took into her care; some of the rest were given to Uncle Grünebaum
and some were sold. Hans rented the little house to a mason on the
condition that in every respect Auntie Schlotterbeck should be
recognized as its keeper and his agent.
After having thus arranged his affairs Hans bade farewell to Neustadt
for the second time and prepared to enter on the career of a tutor as
he had failed to find an unoccupied parish. He accepted a position
on the estate of a certain Mr. von Holoch, whose two children, a son
and a daughter, he was to bring up and instruct. These children gave
him no particular difficulty; he easily won, too, the regard of the
jovial master of the house whose interests were limited to hunting and
agriculture, and the plump, good-humored and industrious housewife
took care that his outward person increased in size. He was also
good friends with the vicar and the manager as well as with all the
other inhabitants of the estate and the village. He was temporarily
embarrassed only when the housekeeper fell violently in love with him
and finally behaved in such a way that she was obliged to leave the
estate. Against his will and for no fault of his own Hans too, found
that he must go. A rich aunt from whom a legacy might some day be
expected appeared on the scene and Hans displeased her as much as he
had pleased the housekeeper. She declared the tutor to be an unpolished
boor who had never been properly brought up himself, and promised to
have her nephew, Erich, educated to become a man of real culture, in
the little capital where she was one of the bigger fish in the social
sea. Mr. von Holoch and his wife were very sorry to see Hans go and, in
their own way, gave him a touching farewell.
[Illustration: THE NIGHTLY ROUND
_From the Painting by Karl Spitzweg_
PERMISSION FRANZ HANFSTAENGL, N.Y.]
By means of a newspaper advertisement Hans found a new position in the
house of a well-to-do manufacturer who made some kind of evil-smelling
stuff in Kohlenau near Magdeburg. When Hans arrived he found the region
flat, the house, which stood near the factory, bleak and inartistic,
its inhabitants industrious and matter-of-fact. The three boys who
were entrusted to his care were destined to become good business men.
Under these conditions life weighed heavily on the young man of God
and, as once before in the government official's house, he longed for
a freer, broader, more beautiful world which he believed he might be
able to find in the metropolis. But his contract with his employer
bound him for three long years and Hans would probably not have got
away before the time was up if, in the autumn, an epidemic, resembling
hunger-typhus, had not broken out among the workmen, and with it a
strike. Hans expressed opinions in regard to this matter which
his employer considered preposterous and disgraceful; in fact, he even
openly took the part of the workmen and, in consequence, received
notice to leave at Easter. Meanwhile his position in the house became
more and more unbearable, his efforts to find a new situation were
unsuccessful and one February afternoon our hero, sad and depressed,
sat on a stone beside the road that led through a little clump of
evergreens near the factory. He had no idea how near the turn in his
fate was, which, at that very moment, was approaching at a trot in the
shape of an elderly, somewhat red-nosed rider with a military moustache.
It was Lieutenant Götz, who greeted Hans characteristically and sought
to explain his unexpected appearance by taking out of his pocket the
newspaper in which Hans had advertised for a position. Then he asked
Hans to tell him about his life since their meeting in the "Post-horn"
in Windheim, and finally declared that he was delighted to find things
going so abominably with the candidate. This made it possible for
him to prove himself a rescuer in case of need. His brother, Privy
Councillor Götz, was looking for a tutor and the lieutenant, after
seeing Hans' advertisement while reading the paper in a restaurant, had
immediately made his way to Kohlenau with the aid of the railway, his
feet, and a horse. He now gave Hans his brother's address and asked him
to write to the latter that he, the lieutenant, recommended Hans. He
advised him moreover to write "official business" on the envelope so
that it should not fall into the hands of his brother's wife. Then the
old soldier bade him a short goodby.
Hans went home busy with his thoughts, wondering at the way the past
had joined itself to the present and at the prospects that opened
in the future. The same evening he wrote till two o'clock composing
a letter to the Privy Councillor which the postman carried away the
next morning. Two weeks of torturing waiting now passed. But on the
twenty-eighth of February the postman handed him the longed-for
registered letter as he was on his way home in the pouring rain from
the church which lay an hour's walk away. The tutor was requested to
present himself personally and punctually to the Privy Councillor at
fifteen minutes to twelve on the eighth of March.
At the prospect of Hans' departure the attitude of the manufacturer and
his family became more conciliatory and the parting did not take place
without emotion. Hans left his trunk behind him, as the bookkeeper had
promised to send it to him wherever he might be, and, armed only with
a light traveling bag, he set forth to meet his new fate. Once more to
his astonishment he found the lieutenant sitting on the same stone in
the clump of evergreens on which he himself had been sitting when the
lieutenant surprised him before, and together they continued their way
on foot. Behind the wood, in the village of Plankenhausen, they stopped
for breakfast, after which the lieutenant thought it advisable to take
a carriage which brought them to the town of ----. From there they
took the train for some distance but got out again at the last station
before they reached the great metropolis, for the lieutenant maintained
that it was better for Hans to enter his new life on foot because his
mind would thus have the opportunity to calm itself and because he, the
lieutenant, had another story which he could tell best on the march.
This story was the family history of the Götzes. Their father had
been an officer of justice in the service of a count in the Harz
Mountains--a conscientious, delicate man, and inhumanly learned. He
would have liked to make of his sons just such gloomy reservoirs of
knowledge but succeeded only in the case of his second son, Theodor.
He studied law and with untiring industry and ever ready submission to
the government finally became Privy Councillor after having married his
pious wife, Aurelie, _née_ von Lichtenhahn. There were two children
of the marriage; a daughter Kleophea, a girl who would fit into any
description of the temptation of St. Anthony, and a son Aimé, born
seven years later. The eldest of the three Götz brothers was Lieutenant
Rudolf, who was then over sixty. His father had sent him to a school
of forestry and he had finally received an appointment in that branch
in the count's service. In the unhappy year 1806 he had entered the
Prussian army and later took part in the campaigns in Russia and
France. The youngest of the three had been Felix who had died five
years before, but who in his youth had been a hot-headed, splendid
fellow unable to stand any discipline. When the volunteer corps against
Napoleon was formed he fled in the night and joined the cavalry. During
the war the two brothers met in 1813 on the Elbe, in 1814 in Paris;
after the war Rudolf Götz continued to serve in a small garrison but
Felix filled and killed his time with sins. Then he tried his luck in
America. For years nothing was heard of him, but in 1830 when things
began to grow lively in Europe again he turned up once more as a
Peruvian or Colombian captain and sought out Rudolf. He had seen much
and had come back from America with a wife and a daughter. He had left
them in Paris while he himself was on his way to Poland, where he meant
to take part in the revolution. He remained till the defeat of the
Poles at Ostrolenka. Ill, tattered and bleeding, in 1832, he knocked
again at Rudolf's door, thus compromising the Prussian officer--and
that was the reason that Rudolf had retired himself so that he might
not be retired. Felix went back to his wife and child in Paris, Rudolf
made his way through the world as well as he could as a half-beggar and
whole vagabond. In 1836 he too went to Paris, arriving just in time for
his sister-in-law's funeral. The younger brother had gone even more
to the dogs than the elder and the two now combined and gave fencing
lessons. Rudolf left Paris as soon as he thought that he had again set
his brother on his feet, but soon after his departure the same old
story began again. Felix died in misery and Rudolf fetched his niece
and brought her to his brother Theodor's house.
During this tale night had come on and, from a hill, the travelers
suddenly saw the great city lying at their feet. Hans could not take it
in in a moment. It seemed to him as if he were standing at the edge of
the sea into which he was to plunge and learn to swim; an irresistible
power impelled him and yet he was afraid. The lieutenant encouraged
him and steered him, inexperienced, awkward, and often surprised as he
was, through the bustle and crowd of the big city, without any mishap,
to the "Green Tree" Inn. The landlord, Lämmert, reported in military
fashion that the "slayers of nine" were all assembled and at the
lieutenant's command Hans had room 13, beside that of the old soldier,
assigned to him.
After they had washed, the lieutenant introduced Hans to the company of
the "slayers of nine." It was made up of men who had all at one time
been connected with the military service and Colonel von Bullau, owner
of the estate of Grunzenow and formerly the commander of Rudolf Götz's
regiment, presided over it. Its purpose was first of all the promotion
of sociability and good-fellowship and it took its name from the rule
that, in his real or imaginary tales of war, no member might, in one
evening, boast of more than nine victims of his valor. In the society
of these good-humored, bluff, thoroughly seasoned old warriors Hans
spent his first evening in the metropolis. The next day the lieutenant
showed Hans somewhat more of it, that is, he dragged him not only
through taverns and pastry cook's shops but also through collections of
weapons and art museums. In the evening, after they had again supped in
the "Green Tree," they went to the opera and heard "Don Giovanni." The
theatre alone with its richly colored life intoxicated the theologian,
who at certain moments was all but overcome by the painful feeling of
having missed untold experience. But when the real play on the stage
went forward he was so spellbound that he himself became the "stone
guest" of that evening.
After the performance the two went to a popular wine tavern frequented
especially by actors, singers and writers. Among them there also
appeared a certain Dr. Stein, who was making a considerable stir just
then. In him Hans recognized--the lieutenant was just greeting an
acquaintance in the next room--Moses Freudenstein and, much affected,
went to his table to greet him. The dapper, bearded gentleman,
however, seemed most embarrassed, explained to Hans that he was now
Dr. Théophile Stein and begged him not to attract attention to them.
He promised to explain everything to him the next day. Hans complied
with his boyhood friend's request and later did not respond to the
lieutenant's remark that this literary fellow and journalist, Dr.
Stein, did not please him particularly and that it seemed to him as if
he had already seen his face somewhere. Moses took no further notice of
the two men till they were about to leave when he succeeded, after the
lieutenant was already outside, in slipping his visiting card, with his
address, into Hans' hand. In his room in the "Green Tree" his friend
gazed at this card long and thoughtfully before he could make up his
mind to go to bed.]