FREEDOM
It would be difficult for a person of moderate emotions or
well-disciplined temperament to conceive the thrilling sense of power
and freedom with which Goethe started on his journey from Strasburg to
Frankfort. Now at last the whole world was before him, and he was tied
down by no bond of duty to the period of his immaturity: now he was free
to develop all that he felt engendering and growing within him. Progress
and activity,--with those two watchwords, what could he not dare and
accomplish? He experienced, moreover, a purely animal sensation of
delight in his liberty, as he traveled over the rich and beautiful
country, reveling in the brilliant sunshine, the large air, and the
sweet smells of the spacious fields. There was something contagious in
the reckless exhilaration of his spirits, and all who met him were
impressed by the spectacle of this handsome, happy youth, gifted with an
organization of mind and body in which one could scarcely detect a
flaw, and seeming to enjoy unbounded delight in the mere consciousness
of existence.
Mentally and physically he was in a condition of perfect health, and he
was thus fitted to receive impressions which modified for the rest of
his life his whole tone of thought. At Mannheim he saw in plaster, for
the first time, some of the masterpieces of Greek art, which from that
moment became for him the most beautiful type of the ideal. He made
companions of all whom he met by the way: now it was a learned
professor, now an enthusiastic artist, a handsome peasant-woman, a burly
farmer, or a prosaic burgher. He could find entertainment in the society
of all, or he could pass, with higher pleasure, hours of silence and
solitude among the relics of the Greeks, or in the open meadows. At
Mainz he fell in with a wandering harpist, and, as the lad was clever
and honest-faced, nothing would serve but that he must be Goethe's
minnesinger and his fellow-traveler for the rest of the journey, and
accept the hospitality of his father's house in Frankfort. So these two
odd companions fared merrily through the prosperous summer fields,
without the shadow of a care between them; and during all their progress
Goethe was so full of mad freaks and whims, and took such fantastic
pleasure in quaint disguises, and the poor harpist was so sanguine and
so elated, that it would have been hard to tell who of the happy pair
was the poet and who was the beggar.
When Alide, after bidding farewell to Goethe, turned in from the sunny
air which struck a chill through her every bone and nerve, she succeeded
with difficulty in mounting the stairs and reaching her room; but, as
she entered, a faint, short cry escaped her, and she fell upon the
floor. It was thus they discovered her, white as death, even to the
lips, with no other sign of life than the just-perceptible pulsation of
the heart. To their terror, they found it impossible to rouse her from
her swoon: at times her fingers would stir, or she would slowly change
the posture of an arm or a hand; but their beseeching, piteous glances
of grief and affection were answered by no gleam of consciousness from
her blank blue eyes, when the heavy lids were for a moment wearily
raised.
They clad her in her night-dress and laid her on her bed, and through
the changeless, unnatural quiet of the darkened days, and the
oppressive, awful stillness of the creeping hours of night, they kept
watch beside her pillow, awaiting in sickening suspense the signs of
returning reason. She looked divinely peaceful in that mysterious
trance: the fragile physical frame seemed utterly exhausted and as if
broken, but so much the more ethereal was the spiritual calm that had
settled upon the exquisite, restful face. Is it true, then, that life is
the highest and the sweetest gift? Might not one hesitate to decide
whether it were better to win back to earth this almost disembodied
spirit, or rather thus quietly and painlessly to let her float into
eternal repose?
But no such thoughts found entrance into the overwrought brain of the
mother, who, with wide, dry eves, was sitting now at midnight beside her
darling's prostrate form. She was the last watcher left awake in the
household: the pastor and his son, useless in the sick-room, had
succumbed to fatigue and anxiety and retired to seek a few hours'
forgetfulness. Rahel, her pale, troubled face still streaming with
tears, lay, utterly worn out, fast asleep on a couch near Alide's
bedside. Madame Duroc had sat for a long time motionless as Alide
herself, never turning her tearless, aching eyes away from her
unconscious child. Even now she suffered less through the realization of
her own approaching loss than through her overpowering maternal pity for
this passionate, broken young heart that had wrestled and endured alone.
She had had bitter, wicked thoughts in her weary vigil: the poor, pious
mother had been tempted to invoke curses upon the stranger who had
wrecked this precious life and had bereaved her own declining years. Now
she could no longer pray nor think; a dull despair had absorbed all her
faculties.
Suddenly a change came upon the face of Alide; the serene expression was
replaced by a slight contraction of the brows, as though she suffered
pain; the lips, which had been relaxed almost into a smile, were drawn
closely together, and her hands, that had rested crossed over her
breast, fell by her sides.
"My child! my child!" cried Madame Duroc, fancying that this was the
very shadow of death darkening over her daughter's face; and, clasping
her arms about Alide's neck, she raised her head from the pillow and
strained it to her breast amid a passion of tears and caresses.
"What is the matter?" said Alide, in an almost inaudible voice.
In an instant Rahel also was by the bedside. "Mamma! mamma!" whispered
she, "for God's sake, do not give way now!"
Madame Duroc, recalled to herself by the pathetically feeble tones of
Alide, no less than by Rahel's appeal, was able to conquer her momentary
weakness.
"Nothing, my darling," she answered, with sufficient composure. "You
have had a long sleep; I was watching you, and I woke you just then from
a painful dream."
"Is that all?" asked Alide, wearily, again closing her eyes. "But,
mamma," she began in a little while, "you were mistaken. I was not
dreaming at all. I have been only resting for a long time. Oh, how tired
I was! Why did you wake me?"
Madame Duroc tried to avoid answering her, and to quiet her into a
natural slumber. During several minutes Alide lay apparently at rest,
but all at once she turned, thoroughly awake, towards the other side of
the bed, where her sister sat. "Rahel," she asked, with the suspicious
curiosity of the sick, "why are you here at this hour? Is it not late
night? What are you both watching me for? Am I ill?"
"No, sister," answered Rahel, soothingly. "You have been ill, but now
you are going to be well. Will you drink this little glass of tea for
us, and go to sleep again, Alide?"
"Why not?" asked Alide, like a child; and, swallowing the draught which
Rahel gave her, she seemed to sink once more into unconsciousness.
But forgetfulness was no longer to be hers. As she lay with closed eyes,
too tired to stir or speak, she lived over in her mind all the joy, the
disappointment, the struggle, and the agony. Her whole frame ached with
utter weariness, a dull, heavy pain oppressed her heart, and her brain
felt on fire with the whirl of thoughts that wrought it into
preternatural activity. If she could not find some relief from this
internal fever, she felt that she should go mad. She raised her eyes and
saw her mother and sister silently weeping; suddenly a yearning
compassion opened the flood-gates of her heart, and she burst into
tears.
"Oh, mamma, let me weep!" she cried, as her mother tried to soothe her,
caressing her brow and tenderly kissing her burning eyelids. "It is
almost as good as rest itself to be able to weep at last!"
When her paroxysm of grief passed over, she was almost lifeless with
exhaustion. "I cannot even weep any more," said she; "and yet all is so
sore about my heart. Everything seems dim and strange to me. I think I
am going to leave you. Rahel, come closer to me, by mamma, that I may
see you both."
Her words were scarcely audible, and were continually interrupted by a
dry, hard sob. They each held one other cold, damp hands in theirs,
kissing it and weeping over it.
"You must ask papa and Otto to come in and see me once more," she went
on, with great effort. "But first, mamma, will you promise me, and you
too, Rahel, before I go, to forgive _him_,--forgive him even in your
thoughts?--for it is not he who was to blame: he was generous and true
to the last; but it was not to be. I did not think this would be the end
of all those happy days. But, believe me, it is not his fault. Tell me
that you forgive him,--that you forgive me."
What could Madame Duroc answer in the anguish of such a moment, save
that she would grant that touching prayer, for the sake of the very
child who had been his victim? But the effort had been too much for
Alide, and before her mother's words died in her ears she had relapsed
into a swoon.
And yet that hour was not the last, it was only the crisis of Alide's
existence. Slowly, gradually, and painfully they won her back to life.
It was a colorless and joyless life enough; and nevertheless she learned
that it could be endured, yes, even cherished, without the element of
hope or the possibility of happiness. The tender devotion of those
around her made her accuse herself on her knees to Heaven, of basest
ingratitude, if for a moment she succumbed to the hungry longing and
pain of her heart and wished that she had been permitted to drift away
from all trouble and desire. She learned the significance and the beauty
of those divine words,--duty and resignation; and, as the slow time wore
away, she even found that a quiet pleasure could steal into certain days
and shed a subdued radiance over her sheltered, monotonous life. She
found herself capable of a sympathy with the happiness of others, a calm
and serious enjoyment of much that had formerly delighted her, and a
pious satisfaction in the daily victory over her own heart.
There was no need for her to retire behind the grated walls of a
convent. Hers were the constant chastity, the exalted faith, the meek
submission of the nun; but she found ample scope for the exercise of all
womanly virtue among those whose love had rescued her from the grave, in
her own pastoral home, where on every side she came in personal contact
with human trouble and human joy.