Produced by David Widger.
*KARL-LUDWIG SAND*
_By_
*Alexandre Dumas, Pere*
_From the Eight Volume set "Celebrated Crimes"_
1910
CONTENTS
*KARL-LUDWIG SAND--1819*
*KARL-LUDWIG SAND--1819*
On the 22nd of March, 1819, about nine o'clock in the morning, a young
man, some twenty-three or twenty-four years old, wearing the dress of a
German student, which consists of a short frock-coat with silk braiding,
tight trousers, and high boots, paused upon a little eminence that
stands upon the road between Kaiserthal and Mannheim, at about
three-quarters of the distance from the former town, and commands a view
of the latter. Mannheim is seen rising calm and smiling amid gardens
which once were ramparts, and which now surround and embrace it like a
girdle of foliage and flowers. Having reached this spot, he lifted his
cap, above the peak of which were embroidered three interlaced oak
leaves in silver, and uncovering his brow, stood bareheaded for a moment
to feel the fresh air that rose from the valley of the Neckar. At first
sight his irregular features produced a strange impression; but before
long the pallor of his face, deeply marked by smallpox, the infinite
gentleness of his eyes, and the elegant framework of his long and
flowing black hair, which grew in an admirable curve around a broad,
high forehead, attracted towards him that emotion of sad sympathy to
which we yield without inquiring its reason or dreaming of resistance.
Though it was still early, he seemed already to have come some distance,
for his boots were covered with dust; but no doubt he was nearing his
destination, for, letting his cap drop, and hooking into his belt his
long pipe, that inseparable companion of the German Borsch, he drew from
his pocket a little note-book, and wrote in it with a pencil: "Left
Wanheim at five in the morning, came in sight of Mannheim at a
quarter-past nine." Then putting his note-book back into his pocket, he
stood motionless for a moment, his lips moving as though in mental
prayer, picked up his hat, and walked on again with a firm step towards
Mannheim.
This young Student was Karl-Ludwig Sand, who was coming from Jena, by
way of Frankfort aid Darmstadt, in order to assassinate Kotzebue.
Now, as we are about to set before our readers one of those terrible
actions for the true appreciation of which the conscience is the sole
judge, they must allow us to make them fully acquainted with him whom
kings regarded as an assassin, judges as a fanatic, and the youth of
Germany as a hero. Charles Louis Sand was born on the 5th of October,
1795, at Wonsiedel, in the Fichtel Wald; he was the youngest son of
Godfrey Christopher Sand, first president and councillor of justice to
the King of Prussia, and of Dorothea Jane Wilheltmina Schapf, his wife.
Besides two elder brothers, George, who entered upon a commercial career
at St, Gall, and Fritz, who was an advocate in the Berlin court of
appeal, he had an elder sister named Caroline, and a younger sister
called Julia.
While still in the cradle he had been attacked by smallpox of the most
malignant type. The virus having spread through all his body, laid bare
his ribs, and almost ate away his skull. For several months he lay
between life and death; but life at last gained the upper hand. He
remained weak and sickly, however, up to his seventh year, at which time
a brain fever attacked him; and again put his life in danger. As a
compensation, however, this fever, when it left him, seemed to carry
away with it all vestiges of his former illness. From that moment his
health and strength came into existence; but during these two long
illnesses his education had remained very backward, and it was not until
the age of eight that he could begin his elementary studies; moreover,
his physical sufferings having retarded his intellectual development, he
needed to work twice as hard as others to reach the same result.
Seeing the efforts that young Sand made, even while still quite a child,
to conquer the defects of his organisation, Professor Salfranck, a
learned and distinguished man, rector of the Hof gymnasium [college],
conceived such an affection for him, that when, at a later time, he was
appointed director of the gymnasium at Ratisbon, he could not part from
his pupil, and took him with him. In this town, and at the age of eleven
years, he gave the first proof of his courage and humanity. One day,
when he was walking with some young friends, he heard cries for help,
and ran in that direction: a little boy, eight or nine years old, had
just fallen into a pond. Sand immediately, without regarding his best
clothes, of which, however, he was very proud, sprang into the water,
and, after unheard-of efforts for a child of his age, succeeded in
bringing the drowning boy to land.
At the age of twelve or thirteen, Sand, who had become more active,
skilful, and determined than many of his elders, often amused himself by
giving battle to the lads of the town and of the neighbouring villages.
The theatre of these childish conflicts, which in their pale innocence
reflected the great battles that were at that time steeping Germany in
blood, was generally a plain extending from the town of Wonsiedel to the
mountain of St. Catherine, which had ruins at its top, and amid the
ruins a tower in excellent preservation. Sand, who was one of the most
eager fighters, seeing that his side had several times been defeated on
account of its numerical inferiority, resolved, in order to make up for
this drawback, to fortify the tower of St. Catherine, and to retire into
it at the next battle if its issue proved unfavourable to him. He
communicated this plan to his companions, who received it with
enthusiasm. A week was spent, accordingly, in collecting all possible
weapons of defence in the tower and in repairing its doors and stairs.
These preparations were made so secretly that the army of the enemy had
no knowledge of them.
Sunday came: the holidays were the days of battle. Whether because the
boys were ashamed of having been beaten last time, or for some other
reason, the band to which Sand belonged was even weaker than usual.
Sure, however, of a means of retreat, he accepted battle,
notwithstanding. The struggle was not a long one; the one party was too
weak in numbers to make a prolonged resistance, and began to retire in
the best order that could be maintained to St. Catherine's tower, which
was reached before much damage had been felt. Having arrived there, some
of the combatants ascended to the ramparts, and while the others
defended themselves at the foot of the wall, began to shower stones and
pebbles upon the conquerors. The latter, surprised at the new method of
defence which was now for the first time adopted, retreated a little;
the rest of the defenders took advantage of the moment to retire into
the fortress and shut the door. Great was the astonishment an the part
of the besiegers: they had always seen that door broken down, and lo!
all at once it was presenting to them a barrier which preserved the
besieged from their blows. Three or four went off to find instruments
with which to break it down and meanwhile the rest of the attacking
farce kept the garrison blockaded.
At the end of half an hour the messengers returned not only with levers
and picks, but also with a considerable reinforcement composed of lads
from, the village to which they had been to fetch tools.
Then began the assault: Sand and his companions defended themselves
desperately; but it was soon evident that, unless help came, the
garrison would be forced to capitulate. It was proposed that they should
draw lots, and that one of the besieged should be chosen, who in spite
of the danger should leave the tower, make his way as best he might
through the enemy's army, and go to summon the other lads of Wonsiedel,
who had faint-heartedly remained at home. The tale of the peril in which
their Comrades actually were, the disgrace of a surrender, which would
fall upon all of them, would no doubt overcome their indolence and
induce them to make a diversion that would allow the garrison to attempt
sortie. This suggestion was adopted; but instead of leaving the decision
to chance, Sand proposed himself as the messenger. As everybody knew his
courage, his skill, and his lightness of foot, the proposition was
unanimously accepted, and the new Decius prepared to execute his act of
devotion. The deed was not free from danger: there were but two means of
egress, one by way of the door, which would lead to the fugitive's
falling immediately into the hands of the enemy; the other by jumping
from a rampart so high that the enemy had not set a guard there. Sand
without a moment's hesitation went to the rampart, where, always
religious, even in his childish pleasures, he made a short prayer; then,
without fear, without hesitation, with a confidence that was almost
superhuman, he sprang to the ground: the distance was twenty-two feet.
Sand flew instantly to Wonsiedel, and reached it, although the enemy had
despatched their best runners in pursuit. Then the garrison, seeing the
success of their enterprise, took fresh courage, and united their
efforts against the besiegers, hoping everything from Sand's eloquence,
which gave him a great influence over his young companions. And, indeed,
in half an hour he was seen reappearing at the head of some thirty boys
of his own age, armed with slings and crossbows. The besiegers, on the
point of being attacked before and behind, recognised the disadvantage
of their position and retreated. The victory remained with Sand's party,
and all the honours of the day were his.
We have related this anecdote in detail, that our readers may understand
from the character of the child what was that of the man. Besides, we
shall see him develop, always calm and superior amid small events as
amid large ones.
About the same time Sand escaped almost miraculously from two dangers.
One day a hod full of plaster fell from a scaffold and broke at his
feet. Another day the Price of Coburg, who during the King of Prussia's
stay at the baths of Alexander, was living in the house of Sand's
parents, was galloping home with four horses when he came suddenly upon
young Karl in a gateway; he could not escape either on the right or the
left, without running the risk of being crushed between the wall and the
wheels, and the coachman could not, when going at such a pace, hold in
his horses: Sand flung himself on his face, and the carriage passed over
him without his receiving so much as a single scratch either from the
horses or the wheels. From that moment many people regarded him as
predestined, and said that the hand of God was upon him.
Meanwhile political events were developing themselves around the boy,
and their seriousness made him a man before the age of manhood. Napoleon
weighed upon Germany like another Sennacherib. Staps had tried to play
the part of Mutius Scaevola, and had died a martyr. Sand was at Hof at
that time, and was a student of the gymnasium of which his good tutor
Salfranck was the head. He learned that the man whom he regarded as the
antichrist was to come and review the troops in that town; he left it at
once and went home to his parents, who asked him for what reason he had
left the gymnasium.
"Because I could not have been in the same town with Napoleon," he
answered, "without trying to kill him, and I do not feel my hand strong
enough for that yet."
This happened in 1809; Sand was fourteen years old. Peace, which was
signed an the 15th of October, gave Germany some respite, and allowed
the young fanatic to resume his studies without being distracted by
political considerations; but in 1811 he was occupied by them again,
when he learned that the gymnasium was to be dissolved and its place
taken by a primary school. To this the rector Salfranck was appointed as
a teacher, but instead of the thousand florins which his former
appointment brought him, the new one was worth only five hundred. Karl
could not remain in a primary school where he could not continue his
education; he wrote to his mother to announce this event and to tell her
with what equanimity the old German philosopher had borne it. Here is
the answer of Sand's mother; it will serve to show the character of the
woman whose mighty heart never belied itself in the midst of the
severest suffering; the answer bears the stamp of that German mysticism
of which we have no idea in France:--
"MY DEAR KARL,--You could not have given me a more grievous piece of
news than that of the event which has just fallen upon your tutor and
father by adoption; nevertheless, terrible though it may be, do not
doubt that he will resign himself to it, in order to give to the virtue
of his pupils a great example of that submission which every subject
owes to the king wham God has set over him. Furthermore, be well assured
that in this world there is no other upright and well calculated policy
than that which grows out of the old precept, 'Honour God, be just and
fear not.' And reflect also that when injustice against the worthy
becomes crying, the public voice makes itself heard, and uplifts those
who are cast down.
"But if, contrary to all probability, this did not happen,--if God
should impose this sublime probation upon the virtue of our friend, if
the world were to disown him and Providence were to became to that,
degree his debtor,--yet in that case there are, believe me, supreme
compensations: all the things and all the events that occur around us
and that act upon us are but machines set in motion by a Higher Hand, so
as to complete our education for a higher world, in which alone we shall
take our true place. Apply yourself, therefore, my dear child, to watch
over yourself unceasingly and always, so that you may not take great and
fine isolated actions for real virtue, and may be ready every moment to
do all that your duty may require of you. Fundamentally nothing is
great, you see, and nothing small, when things are, looked at apart from
one another, and it is only the putting of things together that produces
the unity of evil or of good.
"Moreover, God only sends the trial to the heart where He has put
strength, and the manner in which you tell me that your master has borne
the misfortune that has befallen him is a fresh proof of this great and
eternal truth. You must form yourself upon him, my dear child, and if
you are obliged to leave Hof for Bamberg you must resign yourself to it
courageously. Man has three educations: that which he receives from his
parents, that which circumstances impose upon him, and lastly that which
he gives himself; if that misfortune should occur, pray to God that you
may yourself worthily complete that last education, the most important
of all.
"I will give you as an example the life and conduct of my father, of
whom you have not heard very much, for he died before you were born, but
whose mind and likeness are reproduced in you only among all your
brothers and sisters. The disastrous fire which reduced his native town
to ashes destroyed his fortune and that of his relatives; grief at
having lost everything--for the fire broke out in the next house to
his--cost his father his life; and while his mother, who for six years
had been stretched an a bed of pain, where horrible convulsions held her
fast, supported her three little girls by the needlework that she did in
the intervals of suffering, he went as a mere clerk into one of the
leading mercantile houses of Augsburg, where his lively and yet even
temper made him welcome; there he learned a calling, for which, however,
he was not naturally adapted, and came back to the home of his birth
with a pure and stainless heart, in order to be the support of his
mother and his sisters.
"A man can do much when he wishes to do much: join your efforts to my
prayers, and leave the rest in the hands of God."
The prediction of this Puritan woman was fulfilled: a little time
afterwards rector Salfranck was appointed professor at Richembourg,
whither Sand followed him; it was there that the events of 1813 found
him. In the month of March he wrote to his mother:--
"I can scarcely, dear mother, express to you how calm and happy I begin
to feel since I am permitted to believe in the enfranchisement of my
country, of which I hear on every side as being so near at hand,--of
that country which, in my faith in God, I see beforehand free and
mighty, that country for whose happiness I would undergo the greatest
sufferings, and even death. Take strength for this crisis. If by chance
it should reach our good province, lift your eyes to the Almighty, then
carry them back to beautiful rich nature. The goodness of God which
preserved and protected so many men during the disastrous Thirty Years'
War can do and will do now what it could and did then. As for me, I
believe and hope."
Leipzig came to justify Sand's presentiments; then the year 1814
arrived, and he thought Germany free.
On the 10th of December in the same year he left Richembourg with this
certificate from his master:--
"Karl Sand belongs to the small number of those elect young men who are
distinguished at once by the gifts of the mind and the faculties of the
soul; in application and work he surpasses all his fellow-students, and
this fact explains his rapid progress in all the philosophical and
philological sciences; in mathematics only there are still some further
studies which he might pursue. The most affectionate wishes of his
teacher follow him on his departure.
"J. A. KEYN, "Rector, and master of the first class. "Richembourg, Sept.
15, 1814"
But it was really the parents of Sand, and in particular his mother, who
had prepared the fertile soil in which his teachers had sowed the seeds
of learning; Sand knew this well, for at the moment of setting out for
the university of Tubingen, where he was about to complete the
theological studies necessary for becoming a pastor, as he desired to
do, he wrote to them:--
"I confess that, like all my brothers and sisters, I owe to you that
beautiful and great part of my education which I have seen to be lacking
to most of those around me. Heaven alone can reward you by a conviction
of having so nobly and grandly fulfilled your parental duties, amid many
others."
After having paid a visit to his brother at St. Gall, Sand reached
Tubingen, to which he had been principally attracted by the reputation
of Eschenmayer; he spent that winter quietly, and no other incident
befell than his admission into an association of Burschen, called the
Teutonic; then came tester of 1815, and with it the terrible news that
Napoleon had landed in the Gulf of Juan. Immediately all the youth of
Germany able to bear arms gathered once more around the banners of 1813
and 1814. Sand followed the general example; but the action, which in
others was an effect of enthusiasm, was in him the result of calm and
deliberate resolution. He wrote to Wonsiedel on this occasion:--
"April 22, 1813
"MY DEAR PARENTS,--Until now you have found me submissive to your
parental lessons and to the advice of my excellent masters; until now I
have made efforts to render myself worthy of the education that God has
sent me through you, and have applied myself to become capable of
spreading the word of the Lord through my native land; and for this
reason I can to-day declare to you sincerely the decision that I lave
taken, assured that as tender and affectionate parents you will calm
yourselves, and as German parents and patriots you will rather praise my
resolution than seek to turn me from it.
"The country calls once more for help, and this time the call is
addressed to me, too, for now I have courage and strength. It cast me a
great in ward struggle, believe me, to abstain when in 1813 she gave her
first cry, and only the conviction held me back that thousands of others
were then fighting and conquering for Germany, while I had to live far
the peaceful calling to which I was destined. Now it is a question of
preserving our newly re-established liberty, which in so many places has
already brought in so rich a harvest. The all-powerful and merciful Lord
reserves for us this great trial, which will certainly be the last; it
is for us, therefore, to show that we are worthy of the supreme gift
which He has given us, and capable of upholding it with strength and
firmness.
"The danger of the country has never been so great as it is now, that is
why, among the youth of Germany, the strong should support the wavering,
that all may rise together. Our brave brothers in the north are already
assembling from all parts under their banners; the State of Wurtemburg
is, proclaiming a general levy, and volunteers are coming in from every
quarter, asking to die for their country. I consider it my duty, too, to
fight for my country and for all the dear ones whom I love. If I were
not profoundly convinced of this truth, I should not communicate my
resolution to you; but my family is one that has a really German heart,
and that would consider me as a coward and an unworthy son if I did not
follow this impulse. I certainly feel the greatness of the sacrifice; it
costs me something, believe me, to leave my beautiful studies and go to
put myself under the orders of vulgar, uneducated people, but this only
increases my courage in going to secure the liberty of my brothers;
moreover, when once that liberty is secured, if God deigns to allow, I
will return to carry them His word.
"I take leave, therefore, for a time of you, my most worthy parents, of
my brothers, my sisters, and all who are dear to me. As, after mature
deliberation, it seems the most suitable thing for me to serve with the
Bavarians. I shall get myself enrolled, for as long as the war may last,
with a company of that nation. Farewell, then; live happily; far away
from you as I shall be, I shall follow your pious exhortations. In this
new track I shall still I hope, remain pure before God, and I shall
always try to walk in the path that rises above the things of earth and
leads to those of heaven, and perhaps in this career the bliss of saving
some souls from their fall may be reserved for me.
"Your dear image will always be about me; I will always have the Lord
before my eyes and in my heart, so that I may endure joyfully the pains
and fatigues of this holy war. Include me in your Prayers; God will send
you the hope of better times to help you in bearing the unhappy time in
which we now are. We cannot see one another again soon, unless we
conquer; and if we should be conquered (which God forbid!), then my last
wish, which I pray you, I conjure you, to fulfil, my last and supreme
wish would be that you, my dear and deserving German relatives, should
leave an enslaved country for some other not yet under the yoke.
"But why should we thus sadden one another's hearts? Is not our cause
just and holy, and is not God just and holy? How then should we not be
victors? You see that sometimes I doubt, so, in your letters, which I am
impatiently expecting, have pity on me and do not alarm my soul, far in
any case we shall meet again in another country, and that one will
always be free and happy.
"I am, until death, your dutiful and grateful son, "KARL SAND."
These two lines of Korner's were written as a postscript:
"Perchance above our foeman lying dead
We may behold the star of liberty."
With this farewell to his parents, and with Korner's poems on his lips,
Sand gave up his books, and on the 10th of May we find him in arms among
the volunteer chasseurs enrolled under the command of Major
Falkenhausen, who was at that time at Mannheim; here he found his second
brother, who had preceded him, and they underwent all their drill
together.
Though Sand was not accustomed to great bodily fatigues, he endured
those of the campaign with surprising strength, refusing all the
alleviations that his superiors tried to offer him; for he would allow
no one to outdo him in the trouble that he took for the good of the
country. On the march he invariably shared: anything that he possessed
fraternally with his comrades, helping those who were weaker than
himself to carry their burdens, and, at once priest and soldier,
sustaining them by his words when he was powerless to do anything more.
On the 18th of June, at eight o'clock in the evening, he arrived upon
the field of battle at Waterloo, On the 14th of July he entered Paris.
On the 18th of December, 1815, Karl Sand and his brother were back at
Wonsiedel, to the great joy of their family. He spent the Christmas
holidays and the end of the year with them, but his ardour for his new
vacation did not allow him to remain longer, and an the 7th of January
he reached Erlangen. Then, to make up for lost time, he resolved to
subject his day to fixed and uniform rules, and to write down every
evening what he had done since the morning. It is by the help of this
journal that we are able to follow the young enthusiast, not only in all
the actions of his life, but also in all the thoughts of his mind and
all the hesitations of his conscience. In it we find his whole self,
simple to naivete, enthusiastic to madness, gentle even to weakness
towards others, severe even to asceticism towards himself. One of his
great griefs was the expense that his education occasioned to his
parents, and every useless and costly pleasure left a remorse in his
heart. Thus, on the 9th of February 1816, he wrote:--
"I meant to go and visit my parents. Accordingly I went to the
'Commers-haus', and there I was much amused. N. and T. began upon me
with the everlasting jokes about Wonsiedel; that went on until eleven
o'clock. But afterwards N. and T. began to torment me to go to the
wine-shop; I refused as long as I could. But as, at last, they seemed to
think that it was from contempt of them that I would not go and drink a
glass of Rhine wine with them, I did not dare resist longer.
Unfortunately, they did not stop at Braunberger; and while my glass was
still half full, N. ordered a bottle of champagne. When the first had
disappeared, T. ordered a second; then, even before this second battle
was drunk, both of them ordered a third in my name and in spite of me. I
returned home quite giddy, and threw myself on the sofa, where I slept
for about an hour, and only went to bed afterwards.
"Thus passed this shameful day, in which I have not thought enough of my
kind and worthy parents, who are leading a poor and hard life, and in
which I suffered myself to be led away by the example of people who have
money into spending four florins--an expenditure which was useless, and
which would have kept the whole family for two days. Pardon me, my God,
pardon me, I beseech Thee, and receive the vow that I make never to fall
into the same fault again. In future I will live even more abstemiously
than I usually do, so as to repair the fatal traces in my poor cash-box
of my extravagance, and not to be obliged to ask money of my mother
before the day when she thinks of sending me some herself."
Then, at the very time when the poor young man reproaches himself as if
with a crime with having spent four florins, one of his cousins, a
widow, dies and leaves three orphan children. He runs immediately to
carry the first consolations to the unhappy little creatures, entreats
his mother to take charge of the youngest, and overjoyed at her answer,
thanks her thus:--
"Far the very keen joy that you have given me by your letter, and for
the very dear tone in which your soul speaks to me, bless you, O my
mother! As I might have hoped and been sure, you have taken little
Julius, and that fills me afresh with the deepest gratitude towards you,
the rather that, in my constant trust in your goodness, I had already in
her lifetime given our good little cousin the promise that you are
fulfilling for me after her death."
About March, Sand, though he did not fall ill, had an indisposition that
obliged him to go and take the waters; his mother happened at the time
to be at the ironworks of Redwitz, same twelve or fifteen miles from
Wonsiedel, where the mineral springs are found. Sand established himself
there with his mother, and notwithstanding his desire to avoid
interrupting his work, the time taken up by baths, by invitations to
dinners, and even by the walks which his health required, disturbed the
regularity of his usual existence and awakened his remorse. Thus we find
these lines written in his journal for April 13th:
"Life, without some high aim towards which all thoughts and actions
tend, is an empty desert: my day yesterday is a proof of this; I spent
it with my own people, and that, of course, was a great pleasure to me;
but how did I spend it? In continual eating, so that when I wanted to
work I could do nothing worth doing. Full of indolence and slackness, I
dragged myself into the company of two or three sets of people, and came
from them in the same state of mind as I went to them."
Far these expeditions Sand made use of a little chestnut horse which
belonged to his brother, and of which he was very fond. This little
horse had been bought with great difficulty; for, as we have said, the
whole family was poor. The following note, in relation to the animal,
will give an idea of Sand's simplicity of heart:--
"19th April "To-day I have been very happy at the ironworks, and very
industrious beside my kind mother. In the evening I came home on the
little chestnut. Since the day before yesterday, when he got a strain
and hurt his foot, he has been very restive and very touchy, and when he
got home he refused his food. I thought at first that he did not fancy
his fodder, and gave him some pieces of sugar and sticks of cinnamon,
which he likes very much; he tasted them, but would not eat them. The
poor little beast seems to have same other internal indisposition
besides his injured foot. If by ill luck he were to become foundered or
ill, everybody, even my parents, would throw the blame on me, and yet I
have been very careful and considerate of him. My God, my Lord, Thou who
canst do things both great and small, remove from me this misfortune,
and let him recover as quickly as possible. If, however, Thou host
willed otherwise, and if this fresh trouble is to fall upon us, I will
try to bear it with courage, and as the expiation of same sin.
Meanwhile, O my Gad, I leave this matter in Thy hands, as I leave my
life and my soul."
On the 20th of April he wrote:--"The little horse is well; God has
helped me."
German manners and customs are so different from ours, and contrasts
occur so frequently in the same man, on the other side of the Rhine,
that anything less than all the quotations which we have given would
have been insufficient to place before our readers a true idea of that
character made up of artlessness and reason, childishness and strength,
depression and enthusiasm, material details and poetic ideas, which
renders Sand a man incomprehensible to us. We will now continue the
portrait, which still wants a few finishing touches.
When he returned to Erlangen, after the completion of his "cure," Sand
read Faust far the first time. At first he was amazed at that work,
which seemed to him an orgy of genius; then, when he had entirely
finished it, he reconsidered his first impression, and wrote:--
"4th May
"Oh, horrible struggle of man and devil! What Mephistopheles is in me I
feel far the first time in this hour, and I feel it, O God, with
consternation!
"About eleven at night I finished reading the tragedy, and I felt and
saw the fiend in myself, so that by midnight, amid my tears and despair,
I was at last frightened at myself."
Sand was falling by degrees into a deep melancholy, from which nothing
could rouse him except his desire to purify and preach morality to the
students around him. To anyone who knows university life such a task
will seem superhuman. Sand, however, was not discouraged, and if he
could not gain an influence over everyone, he at least succeeded in
forming around him a considerable circle of the most intelligent and the
best; nevertheless, in the midst of these apostolic labours strange
longings for death would overcome him; he seemed to recall heaven and
want to return to it; he called these temptations "homesickness for the
soul's country."
His favourite authors were Lessing, Schiller, Herder, and Goethe; after
re-reading the two last for the twentieth time, this is what he wrote:
"Good and evil touch each other; the woes of the young Werther and
Weisslingen's seduction, are almost the same story; no matter, we must
not judge between what is good and what is evil in others; for that is
what God will do. I have just been spending much time over this thought,
and have become convinced that in no circumstances ought we to allow
ourselves to seek for the devil in others, and that we have no right to
judge; the only creature over wham we have received the power to judge
and condemn is ourself, and that gives us enough constant care,
business, and trouble.
"I have again to-day felt a profound desire to quit this world and enter
a higher world; but this desire is rather dejection than strength, a
lassitude than an upsoaring."
The year 1816 was spent by Sand in these pious attempts upon his young
comrades, in this ceaseless self-examination, and in the perpetual
battle which he waged with the desire for death that pursued him; every
day he had deeper doubts of himself; and on the 1st of January, 1817, he
wrote this prayer in his diary:--
"Grant to me, O Lord, to me whom Thou halt endowed, in sending me on
earth, with free will, the grace that in this year which we are now
beginning I may never relax this constant attention, and not shamefully
give up the examination of my conscience which I have hitherto made.
Give me strength to increase the attention which I turn upon my own
life, and to diminish that which I turn upon the life of others;
strengthen my will that it may become powerful to command the desires of
the body and the waverings of the soul; give me a pious conscience
entirely devoted to Thy celestial kingdom, that I may always belong to
Thee, or after failing, may be able to return to Thee."
Sand was right in praying to God for the year 1817, and his fears were a
presentiment: the skies of Germany, lightened by Leipzig and Waterloo,
were once more darkened; to the colossal and universal despotism of
Napoleon succeeded the individual oppression of those little princes who
made up the Germanic Diet, and all that the nations had gained by
overthrowing the giant was to be governed by dwarfs. This was the time
when secret societies were organised throughout Germany; let us say a
few words about them, for the history that we are writing is not only
that of individuals, but also that of nations, and every time that
occasion presents itself we will give our little picture a wide horizon.
The secret societies of Germany, of which, without knowing them, we have
all heard, seem, when we follow them up, like rivers, to originate in
some sort of affiliation to those famous clubs of the 'illumines' and
the freemasons which made so much stir in France at the close of the
eighteenth century. At the time of the revolution of '89 these different
philosophical, political, and religious sects enthusiastically accepted
the republican doctrines, and the successes of our first generals have
often been attributed to the secret efforts of the members. When
Bonaparte, who was acquainted with these groups, and was even said to
have belonged to them, exchanged his general's uniform for an emperor's
cloak, all of them, considering him as a renegade and traitor, not only
rose against him at home, but tried to raise enemies against him abroad;
as they addressed themselves to noble and generous passions, they found
a response, and princes to whom their results might be profitable seemed
for a moment to encourage them. Among others, Prince Louis of Prussia
was grandmaster of one of these societies.
The attempted murder by Stops, to which we have already referred, was
one of the thunderclaps of the storm; but its morrow brought the peace
of Vienna, and the degradation of Austria was the death-blow of the old
Germanic organisation. These societies, which had received a mortal
wound in 1806 and were now controlled by the French police, instead of
continuing to meet in public, were forced to seek new members in the
dark. In 1811 several agents of these societies were arrested in Berlin,
but the Prussian authorities, following secret orders of Queen Louisa,
actually protected them, so that they were easily able to deceive the
French police about their intentions. About February 1815 the disasters
of the French army revived the courage of these societies, for it was
seen that God was helping their cause: the students in particular joined
enthusiastically in the new attempts that were now begun; many colleges
enrolled themselves almost entire, anal chose their principals and
professors as captains; the poet, Korner, killed on the 18th of October
at Liegzig, was the hero of this campaign.
The triumph of this national movement, which twice carried the Prussian
army--largely composed of volunteers--to Paris, was followed, when the
treaties of 1815 and the new Germanic constitution were made known, by a
terrible reaction in Germany. All these young men who, exiled by their
princes, had risen in the name of liberty, soon perceived that they had
been used as tools to establish European despotism; they wished to claim
the promises that had been made, but the policy of Talleyrand and
Metternich weighed on them, and repressing them at the first words they
uttered, compelled them to shelter their discontent and their hopes in
the universities, which, enjoying a kind of constitution of their own,
more easily escaped the investigations made by the spies of the Holy
Alliance; but, repressed as they were, these societies continued
nevertheless to exist, and kept up communications by means of travelling
students, who, bearing verbal messages, traversed Germany under the
pretence of botanising, and, passing from mountain to mountain, sowed
broadcast those luminous and hopeful words of which peoples are always
greedy and kings always fear.
We have seen that Sand, carried away by the general movement, had gone
through the campaign of 1815 as a volunteer, although he was then only
nineteen years old. On his return, he, like others, had found his golden
hopes deceived, and it is from this period that we find his journal
assuming the tone of mysticism and sadness which our readers must have
remarked in it. He soon entered one of these associations, the Teutonia;
and from that moment, regarding the great cause which he had taken up as
a religious one, he attempted to make the conspirators worthy of their
enterprise, and thus arose his attempts to inculcate moral doctrines, in
which he succeeded with some, but failed with the majority. Sand had
succeeded, however, in forming around him a certain circle of Puritans,
composed of about sixty to eighty students, all belonging to the group
of the 'Burschenschaft' which continued its political and religious
course despite all the jeers of the opposing group--the
'Landmannschaft'. One of his friends called Dittmar and he were pretty
much the chiefs, and although no election had given them their
authority, they exercised so much influence upon what was decided that
in any particular case their fellow-adepts were sure spontaneously to
obey any impulse that they might choose to impart. The meetings of the
Burschen took place upon a little hill crowned by a ruined castle, which
was situated at some distance from Erlangen, and which Sand and Dittmar
had called the Ruttli, in memory of the spot where Walter Furst,
Melchthal, and Stauffacher had made their vow to deliver their country;
there, under the pretence of students' games, while they built up a new
house with the ruined fragments, they passed alternately from symbol to
action and from action to symbol.
Meanwhile the association was making such advances throughout Germany
that not only the princes and kings of the German confederation, but
also the great European powers, began to be uneasy. France sent agents
to bring home reports, Russia paid agents on the spot, and the
persecutions that touched a professor and exasperated a whole university
often arose from a note sent by the Cabinet of the Tuileries or of St.
Petersburg.
It was amid the events that began thus that Sand, after commending
himself to the protection of God, began the year 1817, in the sad mood
in which we have just seen him, and in which he was kept rather by a
disgust for things as they were than by a disgust for life. On the 8th
of May, preyed upon by this melancholy, which he cannot conquer, and
which comes from the disappointment of all his political hopes, he
writes in his diary:
"I shall find it impassible to set seriously to work, and this idle
temper, this humour of hypochondria which casts its black veil over
everything in life,--continues and grows in spite of the moral activity
which I imposed on myself yesterday."
In the holidays, fearing to burden his parents with any additional
expense, he will not go home, and prefers to make a walking tour with
his friends. No doubt this tour, in addition to its recreative side, had
a political aim. Be that as it may, Sand's diary, during the period of
his journey, shows nothing but the names of the towns through which he
passed. That we may have a notion of Sand's dutifulness to his parents,
it should be said that he did not set out until he had obtained his
mother's permission. On their return, Sand, Dittmar, and their friends
the Burschen, found their Ruttli sacked by their enemies of the
Landmannschaft; the house that they had built was demolished and its
fragments dispersed. Sand took this event for an omen, and was greatly
depressed by it.
"It seems to me, O my God!" he says in his journal, "that everything
swims and turns around me. My soul grows darker and darker; my moral
strength grows less instead of greater; I work and cannot achieve; walk
towards my aim and do not reach it; exhaust myself, and do nothing
great. The days of life flee one after another; cares and uneasiness
increase; I see no haven anywhere for our sacred German cause. The end
will be that we shall fall, for I myself waver. O Lord and Father!
protect me, save me, and lead me to that land from which we are for ever
driven back by the indifference of wavering spirits."
About this time a terrible event struck Sand to the heart; his friend
Dittmar was drowned. This is what he wrote in his diary on the very
morning of the occurrence:
"Oh, almighty God! What is going to become of me? For the last fortnight
I have been drawn into disorder, and have not been able to compel myself
to look fixedly either backward or forward in my life, so that from the
4th of June up to the present hour my journal has remained empty. Yet
every day I might have had occasion to praise Thee, O my God, but my
soul is in anguish. Lord, do not turn from me; the more are the
obstacles the more need is there of strength."
In the evening he added these few words to the lines that he had written
in the morning:--
"Desolation, despair, and death over my friend, over my very deeply
loved Dittmar."
This letter which he wrote to his family contains the account of the
tragic event:--
"You know that when my best friends, A., C., and Z., were gone, I became
particularly intimate with my well-beloved Dittmar of Anspach; Dittmar,
that is to say a true and worthy German, an evangelical Christian,
something more, in short, than a man! An angelic soul, always turned
toward the good, serene, pious, and ready for action; he had come to
live in a room next to mine in Professor Grunler's house; we loved each
other, upheld each other in our efforts, and, well or ill, bare our good
or evil fortune in common. On this last spring evening, after having
worked in his room and having strengthened ourselves anew to resist all
the torments of life and to advance towards the aim that we desired to
attain; we went, about seven in the evening, to the baths of Redwitz. A
very black storm was rising in the sky, but only as yet appeared on the
horizon. E., who was with us, proposed to go home, but Dittmar
persisted, saying that the canal was but a few steps away. God permitted
that it should not be I who replied with these fatal words. So he went
on. The sunset was splendid: I see it still; its violet clouds all
fringed with gold, for I remember the smallest details of that evening.
"Dittmar went down first; he was the only one of us who knew how to
swim; so he walked before us to show us the depth. The water was about
up to our chests, and he, who preceded us, was up to his shoulders, when
he warned us not to go farther, because he was ceasing to feel the
bottom. He immediately gave up his footing and began to swim, but
scarcely had he made ten strokes when, having reached the place where
the river separates into two branches, he uttered a cry, and as he was
trying to get a foothold, disappeared. We ran at once to the bank,
hoping to be able to help him more easily; but we had neither poles nor
ropes within reach, and, as I have told you, neither of us could swim.
Then we called for help with all our might. At that moment Dittmar
reappeared, and by an unheard-of effort seized the end of a willow
branch that was hanging over the water; but the branch was not strong
enough to resist, and our friend sank again, as though he had been
struck by apoplexy. Can you imagine the state in which we were, we his
friends, bending over the river, our fixed and haggard eyes trying to
pierce its depth? My God, my God! how was it we did not go mad?
"A great crowd, however, had run at our cries. For two hours they sought
far him with boats and drag-hooks; and at last they succeeded in drawing
his body from the gulf. Yesterday we bore it solemnly to the field of
rest.
"Thus with the end of this spring has begun the serious summer of my
life. I greeted it in a grave and melancholy mood, and you behold me
now, if not consoled, at least strengthened by religion, which, thanks
to the merits of Christ, gives me the assurance of meeting my friend in
heaven, from the heights of which he will inspire me with strength to
support the trials of this life; and now I do not desire anything more
except to know you free from all anxiety in regard to me."
Instead of serving to unite the two groups of students in a common
grief, this accident, on the contrary, did but intensify their hatred of
each other. Among the first persons who ran up at the cries of Sand and
his companion was a member of the Landmannschaft who could swim, but
instead of going to Dittmar's assistance he exclaimed, "It seems that we
shall get rid of one of these dogs of Burschen; thank God!"
Notwithstanding this manifestation of hatred, which, indeed, might be
that of an individual and not of the whole body, the Burschen invited
their enemies to be present at Dittmar's funeral. A brutal refusal, and
a threat to disturb the ceremony by insults to the corpse, formed their
sole reply. The Burschen then warned the authorities, who took suitable
measures, and all Dittmar's friends followed his coffin sword in hand.
Beholding this calm but resolute demonstration, the Landmannschaft did
not dare to carry out their threat, and contented themselves with
insulting the procession by laughs and songs.
Sand wrote in his journal:
"Dittmar is a great loss to all of us, and particularly to me; he gave
me the overflow of his strength and life; he stopped, as it were, with
an embankment, the part of my character that is irresolute and
undecided. From him it is that I have learned not to dread the
approaching storm, and to know how to fight and die."
Some days after the funeral Sand had a quarrel about Dittmar with one of
his former friends, who had passed over from the Burschen to the
Landmannschaft, and who had made himself conspicuous at the time of the
funeral by his indecent hilarity. It was decided that they should fight
the next day, and on the same day Sand wrote in his journal.
"To-morrow I am to fight with P. G.; yet Thou knowest, O my God, what
great friends we formerly were, except for a certain mistrust with which
his coldness always inspired me; but on this occasion his odious conduct
has caused me to descend from the tenderest pity to the profoundest
hatred.