It is a generally acknowledged truth, that the prerogatives of the
nobility are only maintained at the present time through the weakness of
the middle classes, and many of these who have established themselves
and their families by their intellect, industry and struggles, get into
a state of bliss, which reminds those who see it, of intoxication, as
soon as they are permitted to enter aristocratic circles, or can be seen
in public with barons and counts; and above all, when these treat them
in a friendly manner, no matter from what motive, or when they see a
prospect of a daughter of theirs driving in a carriage with armorial
bearings on the panels, as a countess.
Many women and girls of the citizen class would not hesitate for a
moment to refuse an honorable, good-looking man of their own class, in
order to go to the altar with the oldest, ugliest and stupidest dotard
among the aristocracy.
I shall never forget saying in a joke to a young, well-educated girl of
a wealthy, middle-class family, who had the figure and bearing of a
queen, shortly before her marriage, not to forget an ermine cloak in her
trousseau.
"I know it would suit me capitally," she replied in all seriousness,
"and I should certainly have worn one, if I had married Baron R----,
which I was nearly doing, as you know, but it is not suitable for the
wife of a government official."
When a girl of the middle classes wanders from the paths of virtue, her
fall may, as a rule, be rightly ascribed to her hankering after the
nobility.
In a small German town there lived, some years ago, a tailor, whom we
will call Löwenfuss, a man who, like all knights of the shears, was
equally full of aspirations after culture and liberty. After working for
one master for some time as a poor journeyman, he married his daughter,
and after his father-in-law's death, he succeeded to his business, and
as he was industrious, lucky and managed it well, he soon grew very well
off, and was in a position to give his daughters an education, for which
many a nobleman's daughters might have envied them; for they learned,
not only French and music, but had also acquired many more solid
branches of knowledge, and as they were both pretty and charming girls,
they soon became very much thought of and sought after.
Fanny, the eldest, especially, was her father's pride and the favorite
of society; she was of middle height, slim, with a thoroughly maidenly
figure, and with almost an Italian face, in which two large, dark eyes
seemed to ask for love and submission at the same time; and yet the girl
with the plentiful, black hair was not in the least intended to command,
for she was one of those romantic women who will give themselves, or
even throw themselves, away, but who can never be subjugated. A young
physician fell in love with her, and wished to marry her; Fanny returned
his love, and her parents gladly accepted him as a son-in-law, but she
made it a condition that he should visit her freely and frequently for
two years, before she would consent to become his wife, and she declared
that she would not go to the altar with him, until she was convinced
that not only their hearts, but also that their characters harmonized.
He agreed to her wish, and became a regular visitor at the house of the
educated tailor; they were happy hours for the lovers; they played, sang
and read together, and he told the girl some things from his medical
experiences, which excited and moved her.
Just then, one day an officer went to the tailor's house, to order some
civilian's clothes. This was not an unusual event in itself, but it was
soon to be the cause of one; for accidentally the daughter of _the
artist in clothes_ came into the shop, just as the officer was leaving
it, and on seeing her, he let go of the door-handle, and asked the
tailor who the young lady was.
"My daughter," the tailor said, proudly.
"May I beg you to introduce me to the young lady, Herr Löwenfuss?" the
hussar said.
"I feel flattered at the honor you are doing me," the tailor replied,
with evident pleasure.
"Fanny, the Captain wishes to make your acquaintance; this is my
daughter, Fanny, Captain ..."
"Captain Count Kasimir W----," the hussar interrupted him, as he went up
to the pretty girl, and paid her a compliment or two. They were very
commonplace, stale, everyday phrases, but in spite of this, they
flattered the girl, intelligent as she was, extremely, because it was a
cavalry officer and a Count to boot who addressed them to her. And when,
at last, the Captain, in the most friendly manner, asked the tailor's
permission to be allowed to visit at the house, both father and daughter
granted it to him most readily.
The very next day Count W---- paid his visit, in full dress uniform, and
when Mamma Löwenfuss made some observations about it, how handsome it
was, and how well it became him, he told them that he should not wear it
much longer, as he intended to quit the service soon, and to look for a
wife, in whom birth and wealth were matters of secondary consideration,
while a good education and a knowledge of domestic matters were of
paramount importance; adding that as soon as he had found one, he meant
to retire to his estates.
From that moment, Papa and Mamma Löwenfuss looked upon the Count as
their daughter's suitor; it is certain that he was madly in love with
Fanny; he used to go to their house every evening, and made himself so
liked by all of them, that the young doctor soon felt himself to be
superfluous, and so his visits became rarer and rarer. The Count
confessed his love to Fanny on a moonlight night, while they were
sitting in an arbor covered with honeysuckle, which formed nearly the
whole of Herr Löwenfuss' garden; he swore that he loved, that he adored
her, and when at last she lay trembling in his arms he tried to take her
by storm, but that bold cavalry-exploit did not succeed, and the
good-looking hussar found out, for the first time in his life, that a
woman can at the same time be romantic, passionately in love, and yet
virtuous.
The next morning, the tailor called on the Count, and begged him very
humbly to state what his intentions with regard to Fanny were. The
enamored hussar declared that he was determined to make the tailor's
little daughter, Countess W----. Herr Löwenfuss was so much overcome by
his feelings, that he showed great inclination to embrace his future
son-in-law, The Count, however, laid down certain conditions. The whole
matter must be kept a profound secret, for he had every prospect of
inheriting half a million of florins, on the death of an aunt, who was
already eighty years old, which he should risk by a mesalliance.
When they heard this, the girl's parents certainly hesitated for a time,
to give their consent to the marriage, but the handsome hussar, whose
ardent passion carried Fanny away, at last gained the victory. The
doctor received a pretty little note from the tailor's daughter, in
which she told him that she gave him back his promise, as she had not
found her ideal in him. Fanny then signed a deed, by which she formerly
renounced all claims to her father's property, in favor of her sister,
and left her home and her father's house with the Count under cover of
the night, in order to accompany him to Poland, where the marriage was
to take place in his castle.
Of course malicious tongues declared that the hussar had abducted Fanny,
but her parents smiled at such reports, for they knew better, and the
moment when their daughter would return as Countess W---- would amply
recompense them for everything.
Meanwhile, the Polish Count and the romantic German girl were being
carried by the train through the dreary plains of Masovia.[7] They
stopped in a large town to make some purchases, and the Count, who was
very wealthy and liberal, provided his future wife with everything that
befits a Countess, and which a girl could fancy, and then they continued
their journey. The country grew more picturesque, but more melancholy,
as they went further East; the somber Carpathians rose from the
snow-covered plains and villages, surrounded by white glistening walls,
and stunted willows stood by the side of the roads, ravens sailed
through the white sky, and here and there a small peasant's sledge shot
by, drawn by two thin horses.
[Footnote 7: A division of Poland, of which Warsaw is the
Capital.--TRANSLATOR.]
At last they reached the station, where the Count's steward was waiting
for them with a carriage and four, which brought them to their
destination almost as swiftly as the iron steed.
The numerous servants were drawn up in the yard of the ancient castle to
receive their master and mistress, and they gave loud cheers for her,
for which she thanked them smilingly. When she went into the dim, arched
passages, and the large rooms, for a moment she felt a strange feeling
of fear, but she quickly checked it, for was not her most ardent wish to
be fulfilled in a couple of hours?
She put on her bridal attire, in which a half comical, half
sinister-looking old woman with a toothless mouth and a nose like an
owl's, assisted her, and just as she was fixing the myrtle wreath onto
her dark curls, the bell began to ring, which summoned her to her
wedding. The Count himself, in full uniform, led her to the chapel of
the castle, where the priest, with the steward and the castellan as
witnesses, and the footmen in grand liveries, were awaiting the handsome
young couple.
After the wedding, the marriage certificate was signed in the vestry,
and a groom was sent to the station, where he dispatched a telegram to
her parents, to the effect that the hussar had kept his word, and that
Fanny Löwenfuss had become Countess Faniska W----.
Then the newly-married couple sat down to a beautiful little dinner in
company of the chaplain, the steward and the castellan; the champagne
made them all very cheerful, and at last the Count knelt down before his
young and beautiful wife, boldly took her white satin slipper off her
foot, filled it with wine, and emptied it to her health.
At length night came, a thorough, Polish wedding night, and Faniska had
just finished dressing and was looking at herself with proud
satisfaction in the great mirror that was fastened into the wall, from
top to bottom. A white satin train flowed down behind her like rays from
the moon, a half-open jacket of bright green velvet, trimmed with
valuable ermine, covered her voluptuous, virgin bust and her classic
arms, only to show them all the more seductively at the slightest
motion, while the wealth of her dark hair, in which diamonds hung here
and there like glittering dew-drops, fell down her neck and mingled with
the white fur. The Count came in a red velvet dressing gown trimmed with
sable; at a sign from him, the old woman who was waiting on his wife's
divinity left the room, and the next moment he was lying like a slave at
the feet of his lovely young wife, who raised him up, and was pressing
him to her heaving bosom, when a noise which she had never heard before,
a wild howling, startled the loving woman in the midst of her highest
bliss.
"What was that?" she asked, trembling.
The Count went to the window without speaking, and she followed him,
with her arms round him, and looked half timidly, half curiously out
into the darkness, where large bright spots were moving about in pairs,
in the park at her feet.
"Are they will-o'-the-wisps?" she whispered.
"No, my child, they are wolves," the Count replied, fetching his
double-barreled gun, which he loaded, and went out on the snow-covered
balcony, while she drew the fur more closely over her bosom, and
followed him.
"Will you shoot?" the Count asked her in a whisper, and when she nodded,
he said: "Aim straight at the first pair of bright spots that you see;
they are the eyes of those amiable brutes."
Then he handed her the gun and pointed it for her.
"That is the way--are you pointing straight?"
"Yes."
"Then fire."
A flash, a report, which the echo from the hills repeats four times, and
two of the unpleasant-looking lights had vanished.
Then the Count fired, and by that time their people were all awake; they
drove away the wolves with torches and shouts, and laid the two large
animals, the spoils of a Polish wedding night, at the feet of their
young mistress.
And the days that followed resembled that night. The Count showed
himself the most attentive husband, as his wife's knight and slave, and
she felt quite at home in that dull castle; she rode, drove, smoked,
read French novels and beat her servants as well as any Polish Countess
could have done. In the course of a few years, she presented the Count
with two children, and although he appeared very happy at that, yet,
like most husbands, he grew continually cooler, more indolent, and
neglectful of her. From time to time he left the castle, to see after
his affairs in the capital, and the intervals between those journeys
became continually shorter. Faniska felt that her husband was tired of
her, and much as it grieved her, she did not let him notice it; she was
always the same.
But at last the Count remained away altogether; at first he used to
write, but at last the poor, weeping woman did not even receive letters
to comfort her in her unhappy solitude, and his lawyer sent the money
that she and her children required.
She conjectured, hoped and doubted, suffered and wept for more than a
year; then she suddenly went to the capital and appeared unexpectedly in
his apartments. Painful explanations followed, until at last the Count
told her that he no longer loved her, and could not live with her for
the future, and when she wished to make him do so by legal means, and
entrusted her case to a celebrated lawyer, _the Count denied that she
was his wife_. She produced her marriage certificate, when the most
infamous fraud came to light. A confidential servant of the Count had
acted the part of the priest, and the tailor's beautiful daughter had,
as a matter of fact, merely been the Count's mistress, and her children
were bastards.
The virtuous woman then saw, when it was too late, that it was _she_ who
had formed a mesalliance. Her parents would have nothing to do with her,
and at last it turned out in the bargain that the Count was married long
before he knew her, but that he did not live with his wife.
Then Fanny applied to the police magistrates; she wanted to appeal to
justice, but she was dissuaded from taking criminal proceedings; for
although they would certainly lead to the punishment of her daring
seducer, they would also bring about her own total ruin.
At last, however, her lawyer effected a settlement between them, which
was favorable to Fanny, and which she accepted for the sake of her
children. The Count paid her a considerable sum down, and gave her the
gloomy castle to live in. Thither she returned with a broken heart, and
from that time she lived alone, a sullen misanthrope, a fierce despot.
From time to time, a stranger wandering through the Carpathians, meets a
pale woman of demonic beauty, wearing a magnificent sable skin jacket
and with a gun over her shoulder, in the forest, or in the winter in a
sledge, driving her foaming horses until they nearly drop from fatigue,
while the sleigh bells utter a melancholy sound, and at last die away in
the distance, like the weeping of a solitary, deserted human heart.