But he shook off this rare sombre mood, and awoke to the full
consciousness that Friedland was fled. Well, better so. The stupid
fool would come back soon enough, and to-day, with Prince
Puckler-Muskau, Baron Korff, General de Pfuel, and von Bülow the
pianist, coming to lunch, and perhaps Wagner, if he could finish his
rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table
relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the pillar
of Prague society. How mean to hide one's Judaism! What a burden to
belong to such a race, degenerate sons of a great but long-vanished
past, unable to slough the slave traits engendered by centuries of
slavery! How he had yearned as a boy to shake off the yoke of the
nations, even as he himself had shaken off the yoke of the Law of
Moses. Yes, the scaffold itself would have been welcome, could he but
have made the Jews a respected people. How the persecution of the Jews
of Damascus had kindled the lad of fifteen! A people that bore such
things was hideous. Let them suffer or take vengeance. Even the
Christians marvelled at their sluggish blood, that they did not prefer
swift death on the battle-field to the long torture. Was the
oppression against which the Swiss had rebelled one whit greater?
Cowardly people! It merited no better lot. And he recalled how, when
the ridiculous story that the Jews make use of Christian blood cropped
up again at Rhodes and Lemnos, he had written in his diary that the
universal accusation was a proof that the time was nigh when the Jews
in very sooth _would_ help themselves with Christian blood. _Aide-toi,
le ciel t'aidera._ And ever in his boyish imagination he had seen
himself at the head of an armed nation, delivering it from bondage,
and reigning over a free people. But these dreams had passed with
childhood. He had found a greater, grander cause, that of the
oppressed German people, ground down by capitalists and the Iron Law
of Wages, and all that his Judaism had brought him was a prejudice the
more against him, a cheap cry of Jew-demagogue, to hamper his larger
fight for humanity. And yet was it not strange?--they were all Jews,
his friends and inspirers; Heine and Börne in his youth, and now in
his manhood, Karl Marx. Was it perhaps their sense of the great Ghetto
tragedy that had quickened their indignation against all wrong?
Well, human injustice was approaching its term at last. The Kingdom of
Heaven on earth was beginning to announce itself by signs and
portents. The religion of the future was dawning--the Church of the
People. "O father, father!" he cried, "if you could have lived to see
my triumph!"
V
There was a knock at the door.
His man appeared, but, instead of announcing the Countess Hatzfeldt,
as Lassalle's face expected, he tendered a letter.
Lassalle's face changed yet again, and the thought of the Countess
died out of it as he caught sight of the graceful writing of Sophie de
Solutzew. What memories it brought back of the first real passion of
his life, when, whirled off his feet by an unsuspected current,
enchanted yet astonished to be no longer the easy conqueror throwing
crumbs of love to poor fluttering woman, he had asked the Russian girl
to share his strife and triumphs. That he should want to marry her had
been as amazing to him as her refusal. What talks they had had in this
very room, when she passed through Berlin with her ailing father! How
he had suffered from the delay of her decision, foreseen, yet none the
less paralyzing when it came. And yet no, not paralyzing; he could not
but recognize that the shock had in reality been a stimulation. It was
in the reaction against his misery, in the subtle pleasure of a
temptation escaped despite himself, and of regained freedom to work
for his great ideals, that he had leapt for the first time into
political agitation. The episode had made him reconsider, like a great
sickness or a bereavement. It had shown him that life was slipping,
that afternoon was coming, that in a few more years he would be forty,
that the "Wonder-Child," as Humboldt had styled him, was grown to
mature man, and that all the vent he had as yet found for his great
gifts was a series of scandalous law-suits and an esoteric volume of
the philosophy of Heraclitus the Dark. And now, coming to him in the
midst of his great spurt, this letter from the quieter world of three
years ago--though he himself had provoked it--seemed almost of
dreamland. Its unexpected warmth kindled in him something of the old
glow. Brussels! She was in western Europe again, then. Yes, she still
possessed the Heine letter he required; only it was in her father's
possession, and she had written to him to Russia to send it on. Her
silence had been due to pique at the condition Lassalle had attached
to acceptance of the mere friendship she offered him, to wit, that,
like all his friends, she must write him two letters to his one.
"Inconsiderate little creature!" he thought, smiling but half
resentful. But, though she had now only that interest for him which
the woman who has refused one never quite loses, she stirred again his
sense of the foolish emptiness of loveless life. His brilliant
reputation as scholar and orator and potential leader of men; his
personal fascination, woven of beauty, wit, elegance, and a halo of
conquest, that made him the lion of every social gathering, and his
little suppers to celebrities the talk of Berlin--what a hollow farce
it all was! And his thoughts flew not to Sophie but to the new
radiance that had flitted across his life. He called up the fading
image of the brilliant Helene von Dönniges whom he had met a year
before at the Hirsemenzels. He lived again through that wonderful
evening, that almost Southern episode of mutual love at first sight.
He saw himself holding the salon rapt with his wonderful conversation.
A silvery voice says suddenly, "No, I don't agree with you." He turns
his head in astonishment. O the _piquante_, golden-haired beauty,
adorably white and subtle, the dazzling shoulders, the coquettish play
of the _lorgnette_, the wit, the daring, the _diablerie_. "So it's a
no, a contradiction, the first word I hear of yours. So this is you.
Yes, yes, it is even thus I pictured you." She is rising to beg the
hostess to introduce them, but he places his hand gently on her arm.
"Why? We know each other. You know who I am, and you are Brunehild,
Adrienne Cardoville of the _Wandering Jew_, the gold chestnut hair
that Captain Korff has told me of, in a word--Helene!" The whole salon
regards them, but what are the others but the due audience to this
splendid couple taking the centre of the stage by the right divine of
a love too great for drawing-room conventions, calling almost for
orchestral accompaniment by friend Wagner! He talks no more save to
her, he sups at her side, he is in boyish ecstasies over her taste in
wines. And when, at four in the morning, he throws her mantle over her
shoulders and carries her down the three flights of stairs to her
carriage, even her prudish cousinly chaperon seems to accept this as
but the natural manner in which the hero takes possession of his
heaven-born bride.
So rousing to his sleeping passion was his sudden abandonment to this
old memory, that he now went to a drawer and rummaged for her
photograph. After the Baron, her father, that ultra-respectable
Bavarian diplomatist, had refused to hear her speak of the
Jew-demagogue, Lassalle had asked her to send him her portrait, as he
wished to build a house adorned with frescoes, and the artist was to
seek in her the inspiration of his Brunehild. In the rush of his life,
project and photograph had been alike neglected. He had let her go
without much effort--in a way he still considered her his, since the
opposition had not come from her. But had he been wise to allow this
drifting apart? Great political events might be indeed maturing, but
oh, how slowly, and there was always that standing danger of her
"Moorish Prince"--the young Wallachian student, Janko von Racowitza,
the "dragon who guards my treasure," as he had once called him, and
who, though betrothed to her, was the slave of her caprices, ready to
sacrifice himself if she loved another better, a gentle, pliant
creature Lassalle could scarcely understand, especially considering
his princely blood.
When he at last came upon the photograph, he remembered with a thrill
that her birthday was at hand. She would be of age in a day or two, no
longer the puppet of her father's will.