_Last hours with the beloved one.--Public feeling in the prospect
of war.--The parting.--Employments of the women at home.--Anxieties
over the news from the seat of war.--Ill-success of
Austria.--Friends in trouble.--The Patriotic Aid
Association.--Visit to a friend.--Dreadful news._
For a week I had been prepared for the catastrophe, and yet its
occurrence gave me a bitter blow. I threw myself sobbing on the sofa,
and hid my face in the cushion when Arno brought me the news.
He sat down by me, and began gently to comfort me.
“My darling! Courage! Compose yourself! It is not so bad after all. In a
short time we shall return as conquerors. Then we two shall be doubly
happy. Do not weep so--it breaks my heart. I am almost sorry that I have
engaged to go in any case. But, no; just think, if my comrades are
forced to go, with what right could I remain at home? You yourself would
feel ashamed of me. No. I must experience the baptism of fire some time,
and till that has happened I do not feel myself truly a man or a
soldier. Only think how delightful if I come back with a third star on
my collar--perhaps with the cross on my breast.”
I rested my head on his shoulder, and kept on weeping the more. But I
reflected how small such things were. Stars and crosses seemed to be at
that moment only empty spangles. Not ten grand crosses on that dear
breast could offer me any recompense for the terrible possibility that a
ball might shatter it.
Arno kissed me on the forehead, put me softly aside, and stood up.
“I must go out now, my dear, to my colonel. Have your cry out. When I
come back I hope to find you firm and cheerful. That is what I have need
of, and not to be shaken with sad anticipations. At such a decisive
moment as this my own dear little wife surely will do nothing to take
the heart out of me or damp my ardour for exploits? Good-bye, my
treasure.” And he departed.
I collected myself. His last words were still ringing in my ears. Yes,
plainly my duty now was not merely not to damp, but as far as possible
to increase, his spirit and his ardour for exploits. That is the only
way in which we women can exercise our patriotism, in which we can take
any share in the glory our husbands bring from the battlefields.
“Battlefields”--it is surprising how this word suddenly presented itself
to my mind in two radically different meanings. Partly in the accustomed
historical signification, so pathetic, and so calculated to awake the
highest admiration; partly in the loathsomeness of the bloody, brutal
syllable “fight”. Yes, those poor men who were being hurried out had to
lie stricken down on the field, with their gaping, bleeding wounds, and
among them perhaps--and a loud shriek escaped me as the thought passed
through my mind.
My maid Betty came running in all in a fright. “For God’s sake, my lady,
what has happened?” she asked trembling.
I looked at the girl. Her eyes also were red with weeping. I guessed;
she knew the tidings already, and her lover was a soldier. I felt as if
I could press my sister in misfortune to my heart.
“It is nothing, my child,” I said softly. “Those who go away will surely
return.”
“Ah, my gracious lady, not all,” she replied, breaking out anew into
tears.
My aunt now came in, and Betty withdrew.
“I am come, Martha, to speak comfort to you,” said the old lady as she
embraced me, “and to preach to you resignation in this trial.”
“So you know it?”
“The whole city knows it, and great joy prevails, for this war is very
popular.”
“Joy, Aunt Mary?”
“Oh, yes, among those who see no beloved member of their families
ordered out. I could easily understand that you must be sad, and so I
hastened here. Your papa will also come directly, but not to comfort,
only to congratulate. He is quite beside himself with joy that it is to
go on, and looks on it as a noble chance for Arno to take part in it.
And he is right in the main. For a soldier there is nothing better than
a war. And that is the way you must look at it, my dear child. To fulfil
the duty of your calling is before everything. What must be----”
“Yes, you are right, aunt; what must be, what is inevitable----”
“What is the will of God----” put in Aunt Mary in corroboration.
“Must be borne with composure and resignation.”
“Bravo, Martha. It is certain that everything happens as is before
determined by a wise and all-merciful Providence in His immutable
counsels. Every one’s death-hour is fixed and written down at the hour
of his birth. And for our dear warriors we will pray so much and so
earnestly!”
I did not stop to debate more closely the contradiction that lay between
the two assumptions that a fatal event was at the same time ordained and
also could be turned aside by prayer. I was myself not clear on the
point, and had from my whole education a vague impression that in such
sacred matters one ought not to embark on reasonings. And, indeed, if I
had given voice to such scruples before my aunt it would have grievously
shocked her. Nothing could hurt her more than for people to express
rational doubt on certain points. “Not to argue about it” is the
conventional commandment in matters mysterious. As etiquette forbids to
address questions to a king, so it is a kind of impious breach of
etiquette to want to make inquiries or criticise about a dogma. “Not to
argue about it” is also a commandment easily obeyed, and on this
occasion I followed it very willingly; and so I did not enter into any
contention with my aunt, but on the contrary clung to the consolation
that lay in the resort to prayer. Yes, during the whole time my lord was
absent, I determined to beg so earnestly for the protection of Heaven,
that it should turn aside every bullet in the volley from Arno. Turn
them aside! Whither? To the breast of another, for whom, nevertheless,
prayers were also being made?... And, besides, what had been
demonstrated to me in my course of physics about the accurately
computable and infallible effects of matter and its motion?... What,
another doubt? Away with it.
“Yes, aunt,” I said aloud, in order to break short these contradictions
that kept crossing each other in my mind. “Yes, we will pray continually
and God will hear us. Arno will keep unhurt.”
“You see--you see, dear child, how in heavy times the soul still flies
to religion.... Perhaps the Almighty sends you this trial in order that
you may lay aside your former lukewarmness.”
This again did not strike me as correct. That the whole misunderstanding
between Austria and Sardinia, dating even from the Crimean War, all the
negotiations, the despatch of the ultimatum and its rejection, could
have been ordained by God, in order to warm up my lukewarm spirit!
But to express this doubt would also have been a breach of propriety. As
soon as any one introduces the name of the Almighty, the claims
connected with that name give him a kind of spiritual immunity. But with
regard to the charge of lukewarmness, it had some foundation. My aunt’s
religious feeling came from the depths of her heart, while my piety was
more external. My father was in this respect quite indifferent, and so
was my husband; and so I had had no stimulus from either the one or the
other to any particular zeal of belief. I had never had any means either
of plunging deeply into ecclesiastical learning, since I had always been
able to leave such things unattacked on the “not-argue-about-them”
principle. True, I went every week to mass and every year to confession,
and attended these services with much reverence and devotion; but the
whole thing was still more or less an observance of the etiquette
becoming to my position: I fulfilled my religious duties with the same
correctness as I went through the figures of the Lancers at the state
ball and made the state courtesy when the empress came into the room.
Our chaplain at the château in Lower Austria and the nuntio in Vienna
could have nothing to say against me--yet the charge which my aunt
brought against me was perfectly justified.
“Yes, my child,” she went on, “in prosperity and happiness people easily
forget their home above; but if sickness or fear of death breaks in on
us--or, still more, on those we love--if we are stricken down or in
sorrow----”
She would have gone on in this style for a long time, but the door burst
open, and my father rushed in.
“Hurrah, it’s begun now,” was his joyful greeting to us. “They wanted a
whipping, these puppies, did they? And a whipping they shall have--that
they shall!”
* * * * *
It was a time of excitement. The war “has broken out”. People forget
that it is really two masses of men who are rushing to fight each other,
and conceive of the event as if it was some exalted overruling third
power, whose outbreak compels these two masses into the fight. The whole
responsibility falls on this power, lying beyond the wills of
individuals, and which on its side merely produces the fulfilment of the
destined fate of the nations. Such is the dark and awful conception
which the majority of mankind have of war, and which was mine too. There
was no question of my feeling any revolt against making war in general.
What I suffered from was only that my beloved husband had to go out into
the danger and I to stay behind in anxiety and solitude. I rummaged up
all my old impressions from the days of my historical studies, in order
to strengthen and inspire me with the conviction that it was the
highest of human duties which called my dear one away, and that thereby
the possibility was offered to him of covering himself with glory and
honour. Now at any rate I was living in the midst of an epoch of
history, and this again was a peculiarly elevating thought. Since from
Herodotus and Tacitus, down to the historians of modern times, wars have
always been represented as the events of most importance and of
weightiest consequence, I concluded that at the present time also a war
of this sort would pass with future historians as an event to serve for
the title of a chapter.
This elevated tone, overpowering in its impressiveness, was that which
prevailed everywhere else. Nothing else was spoken of in rooms or
streets, nothing else read in the newspapers, nothing else prayed about
in the churches. Wherever one went one found everywhere the same excited
faces, the same eager talk about the possibilities of the war.
Everything else which engaged the people’s interest at other times--the
theatre, business, art--was now looked on as perfectly insignificant. It
seemed to one as if it were not right to think of anything else whilst
the opening scene in this great drama of the destiny of the world was
being played out. And the different orders to the army with the
well-known phrases of the certainty of victory and promise of glory; and
the troops marching out with clanging music and waving banners; and the
leading articles and public speeches conceived in the most glowing tone
of loyalty and patriotism; the eternal appeal to virtue, honour, duty,
courage, self-sacrifice; the assurances made on both sides that their
nation was known to be the most invincible, most courageous, most
certainly destined to a higher extension of power, the best and the
noblest--all this spread around an atmosphere of heroism, which filled
the whole population with pride and called out in each individual the
belief that he was a great citizen in a great state.
Such bad qualities, however, as these--lust of conquest, love of
fighting, hatred, cruelty, guile, were also certainly to be found, and
were admitted to be shown in war, but always by “the enemy”. To him,
his being in the wrong was quite clear. Quite apart from the political
necessity of the campaign just commenced, apart also from the patriotic
advantages which undoubtedly grew out of it, the conquest over one’s
adversary was a moral work, a discipline carried out by the genius of
culture. These Italians! what a foul, false, sensual, light-minded,
conceited people! And this Louis Napoleon! what a mixture of ambition
and the spirit of intrigue! When his proclamation of war, published on
April 29, appeared with its motto, “Italy free to the Adriatic Sea,” it
called out amongst us a storm of indignation. I did allow myself a
feeble remark that this was at least an unselfish and noble idea, which
must have an inspiriting influence on Italian patriots, but I was soon
put to silence. The dogma that “Louis Napoleon is a scoundrel” was not
to be shaken as long as he was “the enemy”. Everything proceeding from
him was _ab initio_ “scoundrelly”.
Another slight doubt arose in me. In all the battle-stories of history I
had found that the sympathy and admiration of the relaters were always
expressed for the party who wanted to free themselves from a foreign
yoke and who fought for freedom. It is true that I was not capable of
giving any distinct idea of the meaning of the word “yoke,” or of that
of “freedom,” though so abundantly sung about; but one thing seemed to
me perfectly clear, _viz._, that “the shaking off of the yoke” and “the
struggle for freedom” lay this time on the side, not of Austria, but of
Italy. But even for these scruples, timidly conceived as they were, and
still more timidly expressed, I was thundered down. For, here I was so
unlucky as again to trench on a sacred principle--namely, that our
government--_i.e._, the government under which one happened to have been
born--could never result in a yoke, but only in a blessing; that any who
wished to tear themselves loose from “us” could not be warriors of
freedom but only simple rebels; and that generally and in all
circumstances “we” were always and everywhere wholly in the right.
In the early days of May--they were luckily cold and rainy days--sunny
spring weather would have made too painful a contrast--the regiment into
which Arno had exchanged marched. At seven in the morning----
Ah, the preceding night! what a terrible night it was! If the dear one
had only been going on a journey of business, free from any danger, the
parting would have made me unspeakably sorrowful--parting is indeed so
sad! but to the war! to meet the fiery shower of the enemy’s bullets!
Why could I no longer on that night apprehend at all in that word “war”
its elevated historical signification, but only its terror and
threatening of death?
Arno had fallen asleep. He lay there breathing quietly, with a cheerful
expression on his features. I had lighted a fresh candle and put it
behind a screen; I could not be in the dark that night. Of sleep there
was no question whatever for me in that, the _last_, night. I felt that
I must spend the whole time in gazing at least into the beloved face. I
lay on our bed wrapped in a dressing-gown, and, with my elbow on the
pillow, and my chin resting on the palm of my hand, looked down on the
sleeper and wept silently. “How I love you, how I love you, my own
one--and you are going away from me! Why is fate so cruel? How shall I
live without you? O that you may soon come back to me! O God! my good
God! my merciful Father above! let him come back soon--him and all. Let
there soon be peace! Why then cannot there be peace always? We were so
happy--perhaps too happy--for there cannot be any perfect happiness on
earth. Oh, rapture! if he comes home unhurt, and then lies at my side as
he is doing now, and no parting threatened for the morrow! How quietly
you are sleeping, O my dear, brave husband! But how shall you sleep
there? There there is no soft bed for you hung with silk and lace;
there you must lie on the hard wet earth--perhaps in some
ditch--helpless--wounded!” And with this thought I could not help
picturing a gaping sabre-cut on his forehead with the blood trickling
from it, or a bullet-wound in his breast--and a hot pang of compassion
seized me. How I should have liked to throw my arms round him and kiss
him--but I dared not wake him, he wanted this invigorating sleep. Not
six o’clock yet!--tick-tack, tick-tack, unpityingly swift and sure time
marches on to every mark. This indifferent tick-tack distressed me. The
light, too, burned just as indifferently behind its screen as this clock
ticked with its silly, motionless Cupid.... Can it be that all these
things have no perception that it is our _last_ night? My tearful lids
fell together, my consciousness gradually went away, and letting my head
sink on the pillow, I fell asleep at last myself. But only for a short
time. Hardly had I lost my sense in the fog of some formless dream, when
my heart suddenly contracted painfully, and I awoke with a violent
palpitation, and the same feeling of fear as when one is awakened by a
cry for help or an alarm of fire. “Parting, parting!” was the alarm cry.
When I had started so out of sleep for the tenth or twelfth time it was
day, and the candle was flickering out. A knock came at the door.
“Six o’clock, lieutenant,” said the orderly, who had been ordered to
wake him in good time.
Arno rose up. So now the hour was come--now was to be spoken this sad,
sad word--“Farewell”.
It had been settled that I was not to go to the railway with him. The
one quarter of an hour more or less together--that was not worth much.
And the pain of tearing ourselves asunder at last! That I did not wish
to show to strangers. I wanted to be alone in my room when we exchanged
the parting kiss, that I might be able to throw myself on the floor and
shriek--shriek out loud.
Arno put on his clothes quickly. As he was doing so he made me all kinds
of comforting speeches.
“Courage, Martha! In two months at the most the affair will be over, and
I shall be back again at cuckoo-time; only one in a thousand bullets
hits, and that one must not hit me. Others before me have come back from
the wars--look at your papa. It must happen sometime or other. You did
not marry an officer of hussars with the notion that his business was
to grow hyacinths. I will write to you as often as possible, and tell
you how pleasantly and livelily the whole campaign is going on. If
anything bad were destined for me I could not feel so cheerful. I am
going only to win an order, nothing else. Take great care here of
yourself and our Ruru; and if I get promotion he shall have another step
too. Kiss him for me; I will not repeat the parting of last night. The
time will come when it will be a treat for him to have his father tell
him how in the year ’59 he was present at the great victory over Italy.”
I listened to him greedily. This confident chatter did me good. He was
going away all pleased and in good spirits, and so my suffering must be
egotistic and therefore wrong; this thought ought to give me strength to
conquer it.
Another knock at the door.
“Time now, lieutenant.”
“I am quite ready; coming directly.” He spread out his arms. “Now then,
Martha--my wife--my love.”
I lay at once on his breast. I could not speak a word. The word
“farewell” would not pass my lips. I felt that in saying that word I
should give way, and I did not dare to poison the peace, the
cheerfulness of his departure. I reserved the outbreak of my pain as a
kind of reward for my solitude.
But now he spoke the heartbreaking word.
“Good-bye, my all, good-bye,” and pressed his lips closely to mine.
We could not tear ourselves out of this embrace--as though it were our
last. Then on a sudden I felt how his lips were trembling, how
convulsively his bosom heaved, and then releasing me, he covered his
face and sobbed aloud.
That was too much for me. I thought I was going out of my mind.
“Arno, Arno!” I cried out, throwing my arms round him, “stay, stay!” I
knew I was asking what was impossible; still I cried out persistently:
“Stay, stay!”
“Lieutenant,” we heard from outside, “it is now quite time.”
One more kiss--the last of all--and he rushed out.
* * * * *
To tear charpie, to read the news in the papers, to stick pins with
flags into our maps in order to follow the movements of the two armies,
and try to solve the chess problems that followed from them in the sense
that “Austria attacks and gives mate at the fourth move”; to pray
continually in the churches for the protection of our loved ones and the
victory of our country’s arms; to talk of nothing except the news that
came in from the theatre of war; such was what filled up my existence
now and that of my relatives and acquaintance. Life with all its other
interests appeared suspended as it were during the term of the campaign.
Everything except the question “How and when will this war end?” was
bereft of importance--nay, almost of reality. One ate, drank, read, saw
after one’s affairs, but all this had no real concern for us; one thing
only concerned us thoroughly--the telegrams from Italy.
My chief gleams of light were, of course, the news that I received from
Arno himself. They were in a curt style--letter-writing had never been
his strong point--but they brought me the most cheering testimony that
he was still alive and unwounded. These letters and despatches could not
indeed arrive with much regularity, for the communications were often
interrupted, or when an action was impending the field-post was
suspended.
If a few days had passed thus, without my hearing from Arno, and a list
of killed and wounded was published, with what terror did I not read
over the names! It is as great a strain as for the holder of a lottery
ticket to look through the winning numbers in the list of a drawing--but
in the opposite sense; what one seeks in this case, well knowing, thank
God, that the chance is against one, is the chief prize in misery.
The first time that I read the names of the slain--and I had been four
days without news--and saw that the name of Arno Dotzky was not among
them, I folded my hands and cried aloud: “My God, I thank Thee!” But the
words were hardly out of my mouth when it seemed to me like a shrill
discord. I took the paper in my hand again and looked at the list of
names once more. So I thank God because Adolf Schmidt and Carl Müller
and many others were slain, but not Arno Dotzky. Then the same
thanksgiving would have been appropriate if it had risen to heaven from
the hearts of those who trembled for Schmidt and Müller, if they had
read “Dotzky” instead of those names. And why should my thanks in
particular be more pleasing to Heaven than theirs? Yes, this was the
shrill discord of my ejaculation, the presumption and the self-seeking
which lay in it, in believing that Arno had been spared in love for me,
and thanking God that not I but Schmidt’s mother and Müller’s affianced
and fifty others had to burst out in tears over that list.
On the same day I received from Arno another letter:--
“Yesterday we had another stout fight. Unfortunately--unfortunately a
defeat. But comfort yourself, my beloved Martha, the next battle will
bring us victory. It was my first great affair. I was standing in the
midst of a heavy storm of bullets--a peculiar feeling. I will tell you
by word of mouth--but it is frightful. The poor fellows whom one sees
falling around one, and must leave there in spite of their sad
cries--_c’est la guerre_! Hope to see you soon again, my dear. If we can
once dictate terms of peace at Turin, you shall travel after to meet me.
Aunt Mary will be kind enough to take care of our little corporal.”
But if the receipt of letters like these constituted the sunshine of my
life, its darkest shadows were my nights. If I woke out of some dream of
blessed forgetfulness, and the horrible reality with its horrible
possibilities came before my consciousness, I was seized with an almost
intolerable pain, and could not sleep again for hours. I could not get
rid of the idea that Arno was perhaps at that moment lying in a ditch
groaning and dying--thirsting after a drop of water, and calling
longingly for me. The only way that I could gradually compose myself was
by bringing, with all my force, the scene of his return before my
imagination. This was, at any rate, as probable--nay, perhaps more
probable than his lonely death; and so I pictured him to myself as
bursting into the room, and how I should fling myself on his bosom, and
how I should then lead him to Ruru’s cradle, and how happy and how
joyful we might then once more be.
My father was much cast down. One bad news came upon another. First
Montebello, then Magenta. And not he alone, but all Vienna was cast
down. We had at the beginning so confidently hoped that uninterrupted
messages of victory would give occasion for mounting flags on our houses
and singing _Te Deums_, but instead of this the flags were waving and
the priests singing at Turin. There the word now was: “Lord God, we
praise Thee that Thou hast helped us to strike down the wicked
‘Tedeschi’”.
“Do not you think, papa,” I began, “that if another defeat was to happen
to us, peace would then be made? In that case I should wish that----”
“Are you not ashamed to say anything of the kind? I had rather it should
be a seven years’--aye, a thirty years’ war, so that our arms should
conquer at last, and we dictate the terms of peace! What do men go to
war for? I suppose not to get out of it again as quickly as possible; if
so, they might as well remain at home!”
“And that would be by far the best,” sighed I.
“What a cowardly lot you women folk are! Even you--you, who have been so
well grounded in the principles of love of country and feelings of
honour, are yet quite out of heart already, and prize your personal
quiet more than the welfare and fame of your country.”
“Ah! if I did not love my Arno so dearly.”
“Love of your husband, love of your family--all that is very good; but
it ought only to occupy the second place.”
“_Ought_ it?”
* * * * *
The list of killed had already brought the names of several officers
whom I had known personally. Among others, that of the son--her only
one--of an old lady for whom I had conceived a great feeling of respect.
That day I determined to visit the poor lady. It was, for me, a painful,
heavy journey. I could certainly give her no consolation--could only
weep with her. But it was the duty of affection, and so I set out.
When I got to Frau v. Ullmann’s dwelling, I long hesitated before
pulling the bell. The last time I had been there was to a cheerful
little dance. The dear old mistress of the house was herself then full
of joy. “Martha,” she said to me in the course of the evening, “we are
the two most enviable women in Vienna. You have the handsomest of
husbands, and I the most excellent of sons.” And to-day? I still,
indeed, had my husband. But who knows? The shells and grape-shot were
flying there still without ceasing. The minute just past might have made
me a widow: and I began to weep before the door. That was the proper
temper for so mournful a visit. I rang. No one came. I rang a second
time. Again no answer. Then some one put his head out of the door of one
of the other floors.
“It is no good ringing, miss. The dwelling is empty.”
“What! Has Frau v. Ullmann gone?”
“She was taken to a lunatic asylum three days since.” And the head
disappeared again as the door shut.
I remained for a minute or two motionless, rooted to the spot, and the
scenes which must have been going on here passed before my eyes. To what
a height must the poor lady’s sufferings have risen before her agony
broke out in madness!
“And there is my father wishing that the war might last thirty years for
the welfare of the country! How many more such mothers in the country
would have been driven to desperation!”
I went down the stairs shaken to my inmost depth. I determined that I
would pay another visit to a young lady, a friend of mine, whose
husband, like mine, was at the theatre of war.
My way led me through the Herrengasse, past the building called the
Landhaus, where the “Patriotic Aid Association” had established its
offices. At that time there was not as yet any “Convention of Geneva,”
any “Red Cross,” and this aid association had been formed as a
forerunner of these humane institutions, its task being to receive alms
of all kinds, in money, linen, charpie, bandages, etc., for the poor
wounded, and forward them to the seat of war. The gifts came flowing in
abundantly from all sides; it was necessary to have whole shops to
receive them, and scarcely were the different articles packed up and
sent off when new ones were piled up again in their place.
I went in. I was in distress till I could hand over to the committee all
that I had in my purse. Perhaps that might bring health and deliverance
to some suffering soldier, and save _his_ mother from madness.
I knew the president. “Is Prince C---- here?” I asked the porter.
“Not just now. But the vice-president, Baron S----, is upstairs.” He
showed me the way to the room where the alms in money were paid. I had
to pass through several halls, where on long tables were the packets
lying in rows. Parcels of linen, cigars, tobacco, and especially
mountains of charpie. It made me shudder. How many wounds must be
bleeding there, to be covered with all this torn linen? “And there was
my father,” I thought again, “wishing that for the country’s good the
war might last another thirty years! How many of the country’s sons must
in that case sink under their wounds!”
Baron S---- received my contribution with thanks, and gave me the most
ready information about the working of the association in reply to my
numerous questions. It was joyful and comforting to hear how much good
was thus done. Just at the time came the postman with some letters that
had newly arrived, and announced that two barrows of offerings had to
be delivered from the country. I placed myself on a sofa which was in
the lower part of the room to watch the reception of the packets. They
were, however, delivered in another room. A very old gentleman now came
in, who by his bearing was evidently an old soldier.
“Permit me, baron,” he said, as he drew out his purse and sat down on a
stool by the table, “permit me to add my little mite too to your noble
work.” And he gave him a note for a hundred florins. “I look on all this
organisation of yours as really angelic; you see I am an old soldier
myself,” and he gave his name as General ----, “and I can judge what an
enormous blessing it is to the poor fellows who are fighting out there.
I served in the campaigns of the years ’9 and ’13--at that time there
was no ‘Patriotic Aid Association’--at that time no one sent chests of
bandages and charpie after the wounded. How many must then have bled to
death in misery when the resources of the army surgeons were exhausted,
who might have been saved by sending such things as I see here! Ah!
yours is a blessed work. You good noble men, you do not know--no, you do
not know--how much good you are doing there.” And two great tears fell
on the old man’s white moustache.
A noise of steps and voices arose outside. Both leaves of the entrance
door were thrown open and a guardsman announced “Her Majesty the
Empress”.
The vice-president hurried out to the gate to receive his exalted
visitor, as beseemed, at the foot of the stairs, but she had already got
into the ante-room.
I, from my concealed position, looked with admiration on the young
sovereign who in common walking dress appeared to me almost lovelier
than in her state robes at the court ball.
“I am come,” she said to Baron S----, “because I received a letter
to-day from the emperor from the seat of war, in which he writes to tell
me how useful and acceptable the gifts of the Patriotic Aid Association
have proved, and so I wished to look into the matter myself, and put
the committee in receipt of the emperor’s acknowledgment.”
On this she made them give her information about all the details of the
working of the association, and examined as she went along the various
objects from their stores. “Just look, countess,” she said to the
mistress of the robes, who was with her, taking an article of
underclothing in her hand, “how good this linen is, and how beautifully
sewn.” Then she begged the vice-president to conduct her into another of
the rooms, and left the hall by his side. She spoke to him with visible
contentment, and I heard her say besides: “It is a fine patriotic
undertaking, and to the poor soldiers----”
I could not catch any more. “Poor soldiers,” the word kept coming back
to me for a long time, she had pronounced it with so much pity. Yes,
“poor” indeed, and the more one could do to send them help and comfort
the better. But it ran through my head: “If they had not sent these poor
people into this misery at all, would not that have been much better?”
I tried to scare away the thought. It must be so! It must be so! There
is no other excuse for the cruelty of making war except what is
contained in the little word “must”.
Now I went on my way again. The friend whom I was going to visit lived
quite close to the Landhaus on the Kohlmarkt. As I walked along I went
into a book and print shop to buy myself a new map of Upper Italy--ours
had become quite riddled with sticking in the little flags on pins.
Besides me there were many other customers in the place. All were asking
for maps, diagrams, and so forth. Now came my turn.
“Do you want the theatre of war, too, please?” asked the bookseller.
“You have guessed it.”
“No difficulty in that. There is hardly anything else bought.”
He went to get what I wanted, and while he wrapped up the roll in paper
for me, he said to a gentleman standing next to me: “You see, professor,
just now things go badly for those who write or publish books on
_belles lettres_ or science. No one asks for such things. As long as the
war lasts no interest is taken by any one in intellectual matters. It is
a bad time for writers and booksellers.”
“And a bad time for the nation,” replied the professor, “since a loss of
interest in such things is naturally followed by its decline in the
intellectual scale.”
“And there is my father wishing,” thought I for the third time, “that
for the good of the country a thirty years’ war----”
I now took part audibly in the conversation.
“So your business is doing badly?”
“Mine only? No, almost all, your ladyship,” answered the bookseller.
“Except the providers for the army there are no tradesmen to whom the
war has not brought untold loss. Everything is at a standstill; work in
the factories; work in the fields; men without number are without places
and without bread. Our paper is falling; the exchange rising; all desire
for enterprise is decaying; many firms must go bankrupt--in short, it is
a misery! a misery!”
“And there is my father wishing----” I repeated in silence as I left the
shop.
* * * * *
My friend was at home.
Countess Lori Griesbach was in more than one respect the sharer of my
lot. A general’s daughter, like me--married for only a short time to an
officer, like me--and, like me, a “grass widow”. In one thing she went
beyond me: she had not only a husband, but two brothers also at the war.
But Lori was not of an apprehensive nature; she was fully persuaded that
her dear ones were under the peculiar protection of a saint whom she
highly venerated, and she counted confidently on their return.
She received me with open arms.
“Ah! God bless you, Martha; it is indeed good of you to come and see me.
But how pale and worn you are looking; you have not had any bad news
from the seat of war?”
“No, thank God! But the whole thing is so sad.”
“Ah, yes! You mean the defeat. But you must not think too much of that,
the next news may announce a victory.”
“Whether we conquer or are conquered, war is in itself dreadful
altogether. Would it not be better if there could be nothing of the
kind?”
“Then what would be the good of soldiers?”
“What, indeed!” I assented; “then there would be none----”
“What nonsense you are talking. That would be a nice state of things;
nothing but civilians! It makes me shudder. Happily that is impossible.”
“Impossible? Yes, you must be right. I _will_ believe so, or else I
could not conceive that it would not long since have happened.”
“What happened?”
“The abolition of war. But, no; I might as well talk of the abolition of
earthquakes.”
“I don’t know what you mean. As far as I am concerned I am glad this war
has broken out, because I hope that my Louis will distinguish himself.
And for my brothers, too, it is a good thing. Promotion has been going
on so slowly; now they have at least a chance.”
“Have you had any news lately?” I interrupted. “Are your relatives all
well?”
“No, not for a pretty long time now. But, you know, the postal service
is often interrupted, and when people are tired out with a hot march or
a battle, they have not much taste for writing. I am quite easy. Both
Louis and my brothers wear blessed amulets. Mamma hung them on herself.”
“What would you expect to happen, Lori, in a war in which every man in
both armies wore an amulet? If the bullets were flying on both sides,
would they retire back into the clouds and do no harm?”
“I do not understand you. You are so lukewarm in faith. Your Aunt Mary
often laments about it to me.”
“Why do you not answer my question?”
“Because it involves a sneer at a thing which to me is sacred.”
“Sneer; oh, no! only a reasonable reflection.”
“But you must know that it is a sin to entrust your own reason with the
power of judging in things which are above us.”
“Well, I have done, Lori. You may be right. Reflection and research are
of no use. For sometime all kinds of doubts have risen within me about
my most ancient convictions, and I find only pain from them. If I were
to lose the conviction that it was a necessity and a good thing to begin
this war, I should never be able to forgive him who----”
“You mean Louis Napoleon. What an intriguer he is!”
“Whether he or another, I should like to remain in the undisturbed
belief that there are no men at all who have caused the war, but that it
‘broke out’ of itself--broke out, like a nervous fever, like the
eruption of Vesuvius.”
“How excited you get, my love. But let us speak reasonably; so listen to
me. In a short time the war will be over and our husbands will come back
captains. I will then try to get mine to obtain four or six weeks’
leave, and take a trip with me to a watering-place. It will do him good
after all the fatigues he will have undergone; and me also, after the
heat, and the ennui, and the anxiety I have undergone. For you must not
think that I have no fear at all. It may be God’s will after all that
one of my dear ones should meet with a soldier’s death--and even though
it is a noble, enviable death, on the field of honour, for emperor and
fatherland----”
“Why, you are speaking just like one of the proclamations to the army!”
“Yet it would be frightful--poor mamma!--if anything was to happen to
Gustave or Karl. Don’t let us talk about it! And so, to refresh us after
all our terror, it would be good to have a gay season at a
watering-place. I should prefer Carlsbad, and I went there when I was a
girl, and amused myself amazingly.”
“I too went to Marienbad. It was there I made Arno’s acquaintance. But
why are we sitting here idle like this? Have you no linen at hand that
we could tear into charpie? I was at the Patriotic Aid Association
to-day, and there came in, who do you think?”
Here I was interrupted. A footman brought in a letter.
“From Gustave,” cried Lori joyfully, as she broke the seal.
When she had read two lines she gave a shriek, the paper fell out of her
hand and she threw herself on my neck.
“Lori, my poor dear, what is it?” I cried, deeply moved; “your husband?”
“O God, O God!” she groaned. “Read for yourself.”
I took the letter from the floor and began to read. I can reproduce the
phraseology exactly, because afterwards I begged the letter from Lori to
copy it into my diary.
“Read out loud,” she said; “I was not able to read it through.”
I did as she wished.
“Dear Sister,--Yesterday we had a hot combat; there must be a long list
of casualties. In order that you, and in order that our poor mother may
not hear in that way of the misfortune, that you may be able to prepare
her for it gradually (tell her he is severely wounded), I write at once,
my dear, to tell you that our brave brother Karl is of the number of the
warriors who have died for their country.”
I interrupted my reading to embrace my friend.
“I had got so far,” she said gently.
With tearful voice I read on.
“Your husband is untouched, and so am I. Would that the enemy’s bullet
had hit me instead! I envy Karl his hero’s death. He fell at the
beginning of the battle, and did not know that this one again was lost.
It is really too bitter. I saw him fall, for we were riding near each
other. I jumped down at once to pick him up. Only one look and he was
dead. The bullet must have passed through his lungs or heart. It was a
quick painless death. How many others had to suffer for hours, and to
lie helpless on the field in the heat of the battle, till death
released them! It was a murderous day--more than a thousand corpses,
friend and enemy, covered the battlefield. I recognised among the dead
the faces of so many dear friends; and, amongst others, there is
poor”--here I had to turn the page--“poor Arno Dotzky.”
I fell unconscious on the floor.