The 18th February 1853, was a clear, sunny day. At midday the snow
melted, the air was mild; there seemed a breath of spring on the
country through which the train sped along, bearing the unhappy man to
Vienna. But there was night in his heart, night before his eyes; he sat
in the corner of his carriage with closed lids, and only when the train
stopped, did he start up as from sleep, look out at the name of the
station, and deeply sighing, fall back again into his melancholy
brooding.
Was the train too slow for him?
There were moments when he wished for the wings of a storm to carry him
to his destination, and that the time which separated him from the
decisive moment might have the speed of a storm. And in the next
breath, he again dreaded this moment, so that every second of the day
which separated him from it, seemed like a refreshing gift of grace.
Alas! he hardly knew himself what he should desire, what he should
entreat, and one feeling only remained in his change of mood, despair
remained and spread her dark shadow over his heart and brain.
The train stopped again, this time at a larger station. There were many
people on the platform, something extraordinary must have happened;
they were crowding round the station-master who held a paper in his
hand and appeared to be talking in the greatest excitement. The crowd
only dispersed slowly as the train came in; lingeringly and in eager
talk, the travellers approached the carriages.
Sendlingen looked out; the guard went up to the station-master who
offered him the paper; it must have been a telegram. The man read it,
fell back a step turning pale and cried out: "Impossible!" upon which
those standing around shrugged their shoulders.
Sendlingen saw and heard all this; but it did not penetrate his
consciousness. "Heldenberg," he said, murmuring the name of the
station. "Two hours more."
The train steamed off, up a hilly country and therefore with diminished
speed. But to the unhappy man it was again going too swiftly--for each
turn of the wheels was dragging him further away from his child, for a
sight of whose white face of suffering, he was suddenly seized with a
feverish longing, his poor child, that now needed him most of all.
"Frightful!" he groaned aloud. His over-wrought imagination pictured
how she had perhaps just received the news that she was to fall into
the hangman's hands! It was possible that the sentence had passed
through the Court of Records and been added to the rolls; some of the
lawyers attached to the Courts might have read it, or some of the
clerks--if one of them should tell the Governor, or the warders, if
Victorine should accidentally hear or it!
"Back!" he hissed, springing up. "I must go back." Fortunately he was
alone, otherwise his fellow travellers would have thought him mad. And
there was something of madness in his eyes as he seized his portmanteau
from the rack, and grasped the handle of the door as if to open it and
spring from the train.
The guard was just going along the foot-board of the carriages, the
engine whistled, the train slackened, and in the distance the roofs of
a station were visible. The guard looked in astonishment at the livid,
distorted features of the traveller; this look restored Sendlingen to
his senses, and he sank back into his seat. "It is useless," he
reflected. "I must go on to Vienna."
The train pulled up, "Reichendorf! One minute's wait!" cried the guard.
It was a small station, no one either got in or out; only an official
in his red cap stood before the building. Nevertheless, the wait
extended somewhat beyond the allotted time. The guards were engaged in
eager conversation with the official.
Sendlingen could at first hear every word. "There is no doubt about
it!" said the official. "I arranged my apparatus so that I could hear
it being telegraphed to Pfalicz and Bolosch. What a catastrophe."
"And is the wound serious?" asked one of the guards. He was evidently a
retired soldier, the old man's voice trembled as he put the question.
"The accounts differ about that," was the answer. "Great Heavens! who
would have thought such a thing possible in Austria!"
"Oh! it can only have been an Italian!" cried the old soldier. "I was
ten years there and know the treacherous brood!"
Thus much Sendlingen heard, but without rightly understanding, without
asking himself what it might mean. More than that, the sound of the
voices was painful to him as it disturbed his train of thought; he drew
up the window so as to hear no more.
And now another picture presented itself to him as the train sped on,
but it was no brighter or more consoling. He was standing before his
Prince who had said to him: "It is frightful, I pity you, poor father,
but I cannot help you! It is my duty to protect Justice without respect
of persons; I confirmed the sentence of death not because I knew
nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but
because she was guilty, by her own confession and the Judges' verdict.
Shall I pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential
man of rank, because she is your daughter? Is her guilt any the less
for this, will this bring her child to life again? Can you expect this
of me, you, who are yourself a Judge, bound by oath to judge both high
and low with the same measure?" Thus had the Emperor spoken, and he had
found no word to say against it--alas! no syllable of a word--and had
gone home again. And it was a dark night--dark enough to conceal
thieving and robbery or the blackest crime ever done by man--and he was
creeping across the Court-yard at home; creeping towards the little
door that opened into the prison.
"Oh!" he groaned stretching out his hands as if to repel this vision,
"not that!--not that!--And I am too cowardly to do it. I know--too
cowardly! too cowardly!"
Once more the train stopped, this time at a larger station. Sendlingen
did not look out, otherwise he must have noticed that this was some
extraordinary news that was flying through the land and filling all who
heard it with horror. Pale and excited the crowd was thronging in the
greatest confusion; all seemed to look upon what had happened as a
common misfortune. Some were shouting, others staring as if paralyzed
by fear, others again, the majority, were impatiently asking one
another for fresh details.
"It was a shot!" screamed an old gray-headed man in a trembling voice,
above the rest, before he got into the train. "So the telegram to the
prefect says."
"A shot!" the word passed from mouth to mouth and some wept aloud.'
"No!" cried another, "it was a stab from a dagger, the General himself
told me so."
Confused and unintelligible, the cries reached Sendlingen's ears till
they were drowned by the rush of the wheels, and again nothing was to
be heard save the noise of the rolling train.
And again his over-wrought imagination presented another picture. The
Emperor had heard his prayer and said: "I grant her her life, I will
commute the punishment to imprisonment for life, for twenty years. More
than this I dare not do; she would have died had she not been your
daughter, but I dare not remit the punishment altogether, nor so far
lessen it that she, a murderess, should suffer the same punishment as
the daughter of a common man had she committed a serious theft." And to
this too he had known of no answer, and had come home and had to tell
his poor daughter that he had deceived her by lies. She had broken down
under the blow, and had been taken with death in her heart to a
criminal prison, and a few months later as he sat in his office and
dignity at Pfalicz, the news was brought him that she had died.
"Would this be justice?" cried a voice in his tortured breast. "Can I
suffer this? No, no! it would be my most grievous crime, more grievous
than any other."
The train had reached the last station before Vienna, a suburb of the
capital. Here the throng was so dense, the turmoil so great, that
Sendlingen, in spite of his depression, started up and looked out.
"Some great misfortune or other must have happened," he thought, as he
saw the pale faces and excited gestures around him. But so great was
the constraining force of the spell in which his own misery held his
thoughts, that it never penetrated his consciousness so as to ask what
had happened. He leant back in his corner, and of the Babel of voices
outside only isolated, unintelligible sounds reached his ears.
Here the people were no longer disputing with what weapon that deed had
been done which filled them with such deep horror. "It was a stab from
a dagger," they all said, "driven with full force into the neck." Their
only dispute was as to the nationality of the malefactor.
"It was a Hungarian!" cried some. "A Count. He did it out of revenge
because his cousin was hanged."
"That is a lie!" cried a man in Hungarian costume. "A Hungarian
wouldn't do it--the Hungarians are brave--the Austrians are
cowards--the blackguard was an Austrian, a Viennese!"
"Oho!" cried the excited crowd, and in the same instant twenty fists
were clenched at the speaker so that he began to retire. "A Lie! It was
no Viennese! on the contrary, a Viennese came to the rescue!"
"Yes, a Vienna citizen!" shouted others, "a butcher!"
"Was not the assassin an Italian?" asked the guard of the train,
and this was enough for ten others to yell: "It was a
Milanese--naturally!--they are the worst of the lot!" while from
another corner of the platform there was a general cry: "It was a Pole!
a student! He belonged to a secret society and was chosen by lot!"
Two Poles protested, the Hungarian and an Italian joined them; bad
language flew all over the place; fists and sticks were raised; the
police in vain tried to keep the peace. Then a smart little shoemaker's
apprentice hit upon the magic word that quieted all.
"It was a Bohemian!" he screeched, "a journeyman tailor from
Pardubitz!"
In a moment a hundred voices were re-echoing this.
This cry alone penetrated the gloomy reflections in which Sendlingen
was enshrouded, but he only thought for an instant: "Probably some
particularly atrocious murder," and then continued the dark train of
his thoughts.--Now he tried to rouse himself, to cheer himself by new
hopes, and he strove hard to think the solution of which Berger had
spoken, credible.
He clung to it, he pictured the whole scene--it was the one comfort
left to his unhappy mind. He chose the words by which he would
move his Prince's heart, and as the unutterable misery of the last
few months, the immeasurable torment of his present position once more
rose before him, he was seized with pity for himself and his eyes
moistened--assuredly! the Emperor, too, could not fail to be touched,
he would hear him and grant him the life of his child. Not altogether,
he could not possibly do that, but perhaps he would believe living
words rather than dead documentary evidence and would see that the poor
creature was deserving of a milder punishment. And when her term of
punishment was over--oh! how gladly he would cast from him all the pomp
and dignity of the world and journey with her into a foreign land where
her past was not known--how he would sacrifice everything to establish
her in a new life, in new happiness.... A consoling picture rose before
him: a quiet, country seat, apart from the stream of the world, far,
far away, in France or in Holland. Shady trees clustered around a small
house and on the veranda there sat a young woman, still pale and with
an expression of deep seriousness in her face, but her eyes were
brighter already, and there was a look about her mouth as if it could
learn to smile again.
"Vienna."
The train stopped; on the platform there was the same swaying, surging
crowd as at the suburb, but it was much quieter for the police
prevented all shouting and forming into groups. Sendlingen did not
notice how very strongly the station was guarded. The consoling picture
he had conjured up was still before his mind; like a somnambulist he
pushed through the crowd and got into a cab. "To the Savage," he called
to the driver; he gave the order mechanically, from force of habit, for
he always stayed at this hotel.
The shadows of the dusk had fallen upon the streets as the cab drove
out of the station, the lamps' red glimmer was visible through the damp
evening mist that had followed upon the sunny day. Sendlingen leant
back in the cushions and closed his eyes to continue his dream; he did
not notice what an unusual stir there was in the streets. It was as if
the whole population was making its way to the heart of the city; the
vehicles moved in long rows, the pedestrians streamed along in dense
masses. There was no shouting, no loud word, but the murmur of the
thousands, excitedly tramping along, was joined to a strange hollow
buzz that floated unceasingly in the air, and grew stronger and
stronger as the carriage neared the centre of the town. More and more
police were visible, and at the Glacis there was even a battalion at
attention, ready for attack at a moment's notice.
Even this Sendlingen did not notice, it hardly entered his mind
that the cab was driving much more slowly than usual. That picture
of his brain was still before him and hope had visited his heart
again. "Courage!" he whispered to himself. "One night more of this
torment--and then she is saved! He is the only human being who can help
us, and he will help us."
His cab had at length made way through the crowd that poured in an ever
denser throng across the Stefansplatz and up the Graben towards the
Imperial Palace--and it was able to turn into the Kaertnerstrasse. It
drew up before the hotel. The hall-porters darted out and helped
Sendlingen to alight, the proprietor himself hurried forward and bowed
low when he recognised him.
"His Lordship, the Chief Justice!" he cried. "Rooms 7 and 8. What does
your Lordship say to this calamity? It has quite dazed me!"
"What has happened?" asked Sendlingen.
"Your Lordship does not know?" cried the landlord in amazement. "That
is almost impossible! A journey-man tailor from Hungary, Johann
Libenyi, attempted His Majesty's life to-day at the Glacis. The dagger
of the miscreant struck the Emperor in the neck. His Majesty is
severely wounded, if it had not been for the presence of mind of the
butcher, Ettenreich----"
He stopped abruptly, "What is the matter?" he cried darting towards
Sendlingen.
Sendlingen tottered, and but for his help would have fallen to the
ground.