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Regina
or
The Sins of the Fathers
REGINA
OR THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
BY
HERMANN SUDERMANN
_TRANSLATED BY_
_BEATRICE MARSHALL_
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVII
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
John Lane.
* * *
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
John Lane Company.
REGINA
OR THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
CHAPTER I
Peace was signed, and the world, which for so long had been the great
Corsican's plaything, came to itself again. It came to itself, bruised
and mangled, bleeding from a thousand wounds, and studded with
battle-fields like a body with festering sores. Yet, in the rebound
from bondage to freedom, men did not realise that there was anything
very pitiable in their condition. The ground from which their wheat
sprang, they reflected, would bear all the richer fruit from being
soaked in blood, and if bullets and bayonets had thinned their ranks,
there was now more elbow-room for those who were left.
The yawning vacuums in the seething human caldron gave a man space to
breathe in. One great chorus of rejoicing from the Rock of Gibraltar to
the North Cape ascended heavenwards. Bells in every steeple were set in
motion, and from every altar and from every humble hearth arose prayers
of thanksgiving. Mourners hid their diminished heads, for the burst of
victorious song drowned their lamentations, and the earth absorbed
their tears as indifferently as it had sucked in the blood of their
fallen.
In glorious May weather the Peace of Paris was concluded. Lilies
bloomed once more out of lakes of blood, and from the obscurity of
lumber-rooms the blood-saturated banner of the _fleur de lys_ was
dragged forth into the light of day. The Bourbons crept from their
hiding-places, whither they had been driven by fear of Robespierre's
knife. They rubbed their eyes and forthwith began to reign. They had
forgotten nothing and learnt nothing, except a new catchword from
Talleyrand's _en tout cas_ vocabulary, _i.e_. Legitimacy. The rest of
the world was too busily engaged in wreathing laurels to crown the
conquerors, and filling up bumpers to drink their health in, to pay any
attention to this farce of Bourbon government. All eyes were turned in
a fever of expectancy towards the West, whence were to come the
conquering heroes, the laurel-crowned warriors who had been willing to
sacrifice their lives for the honour of wife and child, for justice,
and for the sacred soil of their fatherland. They had been under the
fire of the Corsican Demon, the oppressor whom they in their turn had
hunted and run to earth, till at last he lay in shackles at their feet.
When the victors began the homeward march, the German oaks were
bursting into leaf, soon to be laughingly plundered of their young
green foliage. On they came in swarms, first, joyous and lighthearted,
the pride and flower of the Fatherland, the sons of the wealthy, who,
as Volunteer Jaegers, with their own horses and their own arms, had gone
forth to the war of Liberation. Their progress through Germany was one
magnificent ovation. Wherever they came, their path was strewn with
roses, the most beautiful of maidens longed for the honour of winning
their love, and the most costly wines flowed like water. Behind them
followed a stream of Kossacks, riding over the German fields with a
loose rein. A year before, when they had galloped like a troop of
furies in the rear of the hunted remnant of the Grande Armee, the whole
country had greeted them as saviours of Germany. Public receptions had
been organised in their honour, hymns composed in their praise, and all
sorts of blue-eyed German sentiment was lavishly poured out on the
unwashed Tartar horde. To-day, too, they were conscientiously feted,
but the gaze of all true-hearted Germans was directed with intensest
longing beyond them, looking for those who were still to come, of whom
they seemed but the heralding shadows.
And at last these came, the men of the people, who had taken all their
capital, their bare lives, in their hand, and gone forth to offer it up
for the Fatherland. They advanced with a sound as of bursting trumpets,
half hidden by dense columns of dust. Not exalted and splendid
beings as they had often been painted in the imagination of the
"stay-at-homes," with a halo of diamonds flashing round their heads,
and a cloak flung proudly like a toga round their shoulders. No; they
were faded and haggard, tired as overdriven horses, covered with
vermin, filthy and in rags; their beards matted with sweat and dust.
This was the plight in which they came home. Some were so emaciated and
ghastly pale that they looked as if they could hardly drag one weary
foot after the other; others wore a greedy, brutalised expression, and
the reflection of the lurid glare of war seemed yet to linger in their
sunken, hollow eyes. They held their knotty fists still clenched in the
habitual cramp of murderous lust. Only here and there shone tears of
pure, inspired emotion; only here and there hands were folded on the
butt-end of muskets in reverent, grateful prayer. But all were welcome,
and none were too coarse and hardened by their work of blood and
revenge to find balm in the tears and kisses of their loved ones, and
to greet with hope the dawn of purer times. Of course it could not be
expected that passions which had been lashed into such abnormal and
furious activity, would all at once calm down and slumber again. The
hand that has wielded a sword needs time before it can accustom itself
to the plough and scythe, and not every man knows how to forget
immediately the wild licence of the camp in the hallowed atmosphere of
home.
Every peace is followed by a period of delirium. It was thus in Germany
in anno '14. That year, from which to this generation nothing has
descended but the echo of a unison of paeans, swelling organ-strains,
and clash of bells, was in reality more remarkable for tyranny and
crime than any year before or since. More especially was this the case
in districts where before the war the overweening arrogance and cruelty
of the French occupier had been most heavily felt. Here the beast was
let loose in man. The senses of those who stayed at home had been so
inflamed by the scent of blood from distant battle-fields, and the
smoke of burning villages, that they conjured up before their mental
eyes scenes of horror and devastation at which they had not been
present. Many thirsted for vengeance on secret wrongs, on acts of
cowardice and treachery as yet unexpiated. After all, it seemed
as if the awakened fervour of patriotism, the flowing streams of
freshly-spilled blood, could not suffice even now to wipe out the
memory of the shame and humiliation of previous years.
No one had any suspicion, then, that the Corsican vulture, set fast in
his island cage, was already beginning to sharpen his iron beak,
preparatory to gnawing through its bars, and that before his final
capture thousands of veins were yet to be opened and drained of their
blood.