NOLI ME TANGERE.
"I have attracted you by a Play--for you were a child, and children are
taught by games. But when one method of instruction is exhausted it is
cast aside and exchanged for a higher one, that the child may ripen to
maturity." Thus spoke the voice of the Heavenly Teacher to the countess
as, absorbed in her grief, she drove through the dusk of a wintry
morning. She almost wondered, as she gazed out into the grey dawn, that
the day-star was not weary of pursuing its course. Aye, the mysterious
voice spoke the truth: the play was over, that method of instruction
was exhausted, but she did not yet feel ready for a sterner one and
trembled at the thought of it.
Instead of the divine Kindergarten instructor, came the gloomy teacher
death, forcing the attention of the refractory pupil by the first
pitiless blow upon her own flesh and blood! Day was dawning--in nature
as well as in her own soul, but the sun shone upon a winding sheet,
outside as well as in, a world dead in the clasp of winter. Where was
the day when the redeeming love for which she hoped would appear to her
in the spring garden? Woe to all who believed in spring. Their best
gift was a cold winter sunlight on snow-covered graves.
The corpse of her spring dream was lying on the laughing shores of the
Riviera.
The God whom she sought was very different from the one she intended to
banish from her heart. The new teacher seized her hand with bony
fingers and forced her to look closely at the God whom she herself had
created, and whom she now upbraided with having deceived her. "What
kind of God would this creature of your imagination be?" rang in her
ears with pitiless mockery. Aye, she had believed Him to be the Jupiter
who loved mortal women, only in the course of the ages he had changed
his name and now appeared as Christ. But she was now forced to learn
that He was no offspring of the sensual fancy of the nations, but a
contrast to every natural tendency and desire--a _true_ God, not a
creation of mankind. Were it not so, men would have invented a more
complaisant one. Must not that be a divine power which, in opposition
to all human, all earthly passions, with neither splendor, nor power,
with the most insignificant means has established an empire throughout
the world? Aye, she recognized with reverent awe that this was a God,
though unlike the one whom she sought, Christ was not Jupiter--and
Freyer was not Christ. The _latter_ cannot be clasped in the arms, does
not yield to earthly yearning, no matter how fervently devout. Spirit
as He is, He vanishes, even where He reveals Himself in material form,
and whoever thinks to grasp Him, holds but the poor doll, whom He gave
for a momentary support to the childish mind, which seeks solely what
is tangible!
Mary Magdalene was permitted to serve and anoint Him when He walked on
earth in human form, but when she tried to clasp the risen Lord the
"_noli me tangere_" thundered in her ears, and God withdrew from mortal
touch. In Mary Magdalene, however, the love kindled by the visible
Master was strong enough to burn on for the invisible One--she no
longer sought Him among the living, but went into solitude and lived
for the vanished Christ. But the countess had not advanced so far. What
"God of Love" was this, who imposed conditions which made the warm
blood freeze, killed the warm life-pulses? What possession was this,
which could only be obtained by renunciation, what joy that could be
attained solely by mortification? Her passionate nature could not
comprehend this contradiction. She longed to clasp His knees and wipe
His feet with her hair, at least that, nothing more, only that--she
would be modest! But not even that was allowed her.
This was the great impulse of religious materialism, in which divinity
and humanity met, the Magdalene element in the history of the
conversion of mankind, which attracted souls like that of Madeleine von
Wildenau, made them feel for an instant the bliss of the immediate
presence of God, and then left them disappointed and alone until they
perceived that in that one instant wings have grown--strong enough to
bear them up to Heaven, if they once learned to use them.
Thus quivering and forsaken, the heart of the modern Magdalene lay on
the earth when the first _noli me tangere_ echoed in her ears. She had
never known that there were things which could not be had, and now that
she wanted a God and could not obtain Him, she murmured like a child
which longs in vain for the stars until it attains a higher
consciousness of ownership than lies in mere personal possession, the
feeling which in quiet contemplation of the starry firmament fills us
with the proud consciousness: "This is yours!"
Everything is ours--and nothing, according to our view of it. To expand
our breasts with its mighty thoughts--to merge ourselves in it and revel
in the whirling dance of the atoms, _in that sense_ the universe is
ours. But absorb and contain it we cannot; in that way it does not
belong to us. It is the same with God. Greatness cannot enter
littleness--the small must be absorbed by the great; but its power of
possession lies in the very fact that it can do this and still retain
its own nature. How long will it last, and what will it cost, ere the
impatient child attains the peace of this realization?
In the faint glimmer of the dawn the countess drove past a little
church in the suburbs of Munich. It was the hour for early mass. A few
sleepy, shivering old women, closely muffled, were shuffling over the
snow in big felt shoes toward the open door. A dim ray of light
streamed out, no organ notes, no festal display lured worshippers, for
it was a "low mass." It was cold and gloomy outside, songless within.
Yet the countess suddenly stopped the carriage.
"I am going into the church a moment," she said, tottering forward with
uncertain steps, for she was exhausted both physically and mentally.
The old women eyed her malignantly, as if asking: "What do you want
among poor ugly crones who drag their crooked limbs out of bed so early
to go to their Saviour, because later they must do the work of their
little homes and cannot get away? What brings you to share with us the
bitter bread of poverty, the bread of the poor in spirit, with which
our Saviour fed the five thousand and will feed thousands and tens of
thousands more from eternity to eternity? Of what use to you are the
crumbs scattered here for a few beggars?"
She felt ashamed as she moved in her long velvet train and costly fur
cloak past the cowering figures redolent of the musty straw beds and
close sleeping rooms whence they had come, and read these questions on
the wrinkled faces peering from under woollen hoods and caps, as if
she, the rich woman, had come to take something from the poor. She had
gone forward to the empty front benches near the altar, where the timid
common people do not venture to sit, but--she knew not why--as she was
about to kneel there, she suddenly felt that she could not cut off a
view of any part of the altar from the people behind, deprive them of
anything to which she had no right, and turning she went back to the
last seat. There, behind a trembling old man in a shabby woollen
blouse, who could scarcely bend his stiff knees and sat coughing and
gasping, and a consumptive woman, who was passing the beads of her
rosary between thin, crooked fingers, she knelt down. She was more at
ease now--she felt that she had no rights here, that she was the least
among the lowliest.
The church was still dark, it had not yet been lighted, the sacristan
was obliged to be saving--every one knew that. The faint ray which
streamed through the door came from the candle ends brought by the
congregation, who set them in front of the praying-desks to read their
prayer-books. The first person was compelled to use a match, the others
lighted their candles from his and were glad to be able to save the
matches. It was a silent agreement, which every one knew. Here and
there a tiny light glowed brightly--ever and anon in some dark corner
the slight snap of a match was heard and directly after a column or the
image of some saint emerged from the wavering shadows, now fainter, now
more distinct, according as the light flashed up and down, till it
burned clearly. Then the nave grew bright and the breath of the
congregation rose through the cold church over the little flames like
clouds of incense. The high-altar alone still lay veiled in darkness.
The light of a wax-candle on the bench in front shone brightly into the
countess' eyes. The woman in the three-cornered kerchief with the
sunken temples and bony hands glanced back and gazed mournfully, almost
reproachfully, into her face and at her rich fur cloak. Madeleine von
Wildenau was ashamed of her beauty, ashamed that she wore furs while
the woman in front of her scarcely had her shoulders covered. She
felt burdened, she almost wanted to excuse herself. If she were poor
also--she would have no cause to be ashamed. She gently drew out her
purse and slipped the contents into the woman's hand. The latter drew
back startled, she could not believe, could not understand that she was
really to take it, that the lady was in earnest.
"May God reward you! I'll pray for you a thousand times!" she
whispered, and a great, unutterable emotion filled the countess' soul
as she met the poor woman's grateful glance. Then the kneeling crone
nudged her neighbor, the coughing, stammering old man, and pressed a
gold coin into his hand.
"There's something for you! You're poor and needy too."
The latter looked at the woman, who was a stranger, as though she were
an apparition from another world. "Why, what is this?" he murmured with
difficulty.
"The lady behind gave it to me," said the woman, pointing backward with
her thumb.
The old man nodded to the lady, as well as his stiff neck would permit,
and the woman did not notice that he ought to have thanked her, as the
money was given to her and she had voluntarily shared it with him.
Countess Wildenau experienced a strange emotion of satisfaction as if
now, for the first time, she had a right here, and with the gift she
had purchased her share of the "bread of poverty."
At last there was a movement near the high altar. A sleepy alcolyte
shuffled in, made his reverence before it and lighted a candle, which
would not burn because he did not wait till the wax, which was
stiffened by the cold, had melted. While he was lighting the second,
the first went out and he was obliged to begin his task anew. The wand
wavered to and fro a long time in the boy's numb hands, but at last the
altar was lighted, the boy bowed again, and went down the stone steps
into the vestry-room. This was ordinary prose, but the devout
worshippers did not perceive it. They all knew the wondrous spell of
fire, with which the Catholic church consecrates candles and gives
their light the power to scatter the princes of darkness, and rejoiced
in the victorious rays from which the evil spirits fled, they saw their
gliding shadows dart in wild haste through the church and the sleepy
boy who had wrought the miracle by means of his lighter disappear. _The
light shines, no matter who kindles it_. The poor dark souls, illumined
by no ray of earthly hope, eagerly absorbed its cheering rays and so
long as the consecrated candles burned, the ghosts of care, discord,
envy, and all the other demons of poverty were spell-bound! Now the
priest entered, clad in his white robes, accompanied by two attendants.
A deathlike stillness reigned throughout the church. In a low, almost
inaudible whisper he read the Latin text, which no one understood, but
whose meaning every one knew, even the countess.
Everything which gives an impulse to the independent activity of the
soul produces more effect than what is received in a complete form.
During the incomprehensible muttering, the countess had time to recall
the whole mighty drama to which it referred better and more vividly
than any distinct prosaic theological essay could have described
it. Again she experienced all the horrors of the Passion, as she
had done in the Passion Play--only this time invisibly, instead of
visibly--spiritually instead of materially--"Noli me tangere!"
The priest stooped and kissed the altar, it meant the Judas kiss. "Can
you kiss those lips and not fall down to worship?" cried a voice in the
countess' heart, as it had done nine years before, and a nameless
longing seized upon her for the divine contact which had fallen to the
traitor's lot--but "Noli me tangere" rang in the ears of the penitent
Magdalene. Before her stood an altar and a priest, not Christ nor
Judas, and the kiss she envied was imprinted upon white linen, not the
Saviour's lips. She pressed her hands upon her heart and a few bitter
tears oozed from beneath her drooping lashes. She was like the blind
princess in Henrik Hertz' wonderful poem, who, when she suddenly
obtained her sight, no longer knew herself among the objects which she
had formerly recognized only by touch, and fancied that she had lost
everything which was dear and familiar--because she had gained a new
sense which she knew not how to use--a _higher_ one than that of her
groping finger tips. Then in her fear she turned to the _invisible_
world and recognized _it_ only, it alone had not changed with outward
phenomena because alike to the blind and those who had sight it
revealed itself only to the _mind_. It was the same with the countess.
The world which she could touch with her fingers had vanished and
before her newly awakened sense lay a boundless space filled with
strange forms, which all seemed so unattainably distant; one only
remained the same: the God whom she had _never_ seen. And now when
everything once familiar and near was transformed and removed to a vast
distance, when everything appeared under a wholly different guise, it
was He to whom her heart, accustomed to blindness, sought and found the
way.
The priest was completely absorbed in his prayer-book. What he beheld
the others felt with mysterious awe. It was like looking through a
telescope into a strange world, while those who were not permitted to
do so stood by and imagined what the former beheld.
The Sursum corda fell slowly from the lips of the priest. The bell
sounded. "Christ is present!" The congregation, as if dazzled, bowed
their faces and crossed themselves in the presence of the marvel
that Heaven itself vouchsafed to descend to their unworthy selves.
Again the bell sounded for the transformation, and perfect silence
followed--while the miracle was being wrought by which God entered the
mouths of mortals to be the bread of life to mankind.
This was the bread of the poor and simple-hearted, whose crumbs the
Countess Wildenau had that day stolen and was eating with secret shame.
The mass was over, the priest pronounced the benediction and
withdrew to the vestry-room. The people put out their bits of wax
candles--clouds of light smoke filled the church. It was like Christmas
Eve, after the children have gone to bed and the candles on the tree
are extinguished--but their hearts are still full of Christmas joy. The
countess knew not why the thought entered her mind, but she suddenly
recollected that Christmas was close at hand and she no longer had any
child on whom she could bestow gifts. True, she had never done this
herself, but always left Josepha to attend to the matter. This year,
however, she had thought she would do it, now it was too late. Suddenly
she saw a child's eyes gazing happily at a lighted tree and below it a
manger, with the same eyes sparkling back. The whole world, heaven and
earth were glittering with children's beaming eyes, but the most
beautiful of all--those of her own boy, were closed--no grateful glance
smiled upon her amid the universal joy, for her there was no Christmas,
for it was the mother's day, and she was _not_ a mother. "Child in the
manger, bend down to the sinner who mourns neglected love at Thy feet."
Sinking on the kneeling bench, she sobbed bitterly. It was dark and
silent. The congregation had gone, the candles on the altar had been
extinguished as fast as possible--the ever-burning lamp cast dull red
rays upon the altar, dawn was glimmering through the frost-covered
window panes. All was still--only in the distance the cocks were
crowing. Again she remembered that evening when her father came and she
had knelt with Freyer in the church before the Pieta, until the crowing
of the cock reminded her how easy it was to betray love and fidelity.
Rising wearily from her knees, she dragged herself to a Pieta above a
side altar, and pressed her lips upon the wounds of the divine body.
She gazed to see if the eyes would not once more open, but it remained
rigid and lifeless, this time no echo answered the mute pleading of
the warm lips. No second miracle was wrought for her, the hand which
guided her had been withdrawn, and like the poorest and most humble
mortal she was forced to grope her way wearily along the arid path of
tradition;--it was just, she had deserved nothing better, and the great
discovery which came to her that day was that this path also led to
God.
While thus absorbed in contemplation, a voice suddenly startled her so
that she almost fainted: "What does this mean, Countess? You here at
early mass, in a court-train! Are you going to write romances--or live
them? I have often asked you the question, but never with so much
justification as now!" Prince Emil was standing before her. She could
almost have shrieked aloud in her delight. "Prince--my dear Prince!"
"Unfortunately, Prince no longer, but Duke of Metten-Barnheim, in which
character I again lay myself at your feet and beg for a continuation of
your favor!" said the prince with a touch of humor. Raising her from
her knees, he led her into the little corridor of the church. "My
father," he went on, "feels so well at Cannes that he wants to spend
his old age there in peace, and summoned me by telegram to sign the
abdication documents and take the burden of government upon my young
shoulders. I was just coming from the station and, as I drove by, saw
your carriage waiting before this poor temple. I stopped and obtained
with difficulty from the half frozen coachman information concerning
the place where his mistress was seeking compensation from the ennui of
a court entertainment! A romantic episode, indeed! A beautiful woman in
court dress, weeping and doing penance at six o'clock in the morning,
among beggars and cripples in a little church in the suburbs. A
swearing coachman and two horses stiff from the cold waiting outside,
and lastly a faithful knight, who comes just at the right time to
prevent a moral suicide and save a pair of valuable horses--what more
can be desired in our time, in the way of romance?"
"Prince--pardon me, Duke, your mockery hurts me."
"Yes, I suppose so, you are far too wearied, to understand humor. Come,
I will take you to the carriage. There, lean on me, you are ill,
_machere Madeleine_, you cannot go on in this way. What--you will take
holy water, into which Heaven knows who has dipped his fingers. Well,
to the pure all things are pure. Fortunately the doubtful fluid is
frozen!"
Talking on in this way he led her out into the open air. A keen morning
wind from the mountains was sweeping through the streets and cut the
countess' tear-stained face. She involuntarily hid it on the duke's
breast. The latter put his arm gently around her and lifted her into
the carriage. His own coachman was waiting near, but the duke looked at
her beseechingly. "May I go with you? I cannot possibly leave you in
this state."
The countess nodded. He motioned to his servant to drive home and
entered the Wildenau equipage. "First of all, Madeleine," he said,
warming her cold hands in his, "tell me: _Are_ you already a saint--or
do you wish to _become_ one? Whence dates this last caprice of my
adored friend?"
"No saint, Duke--neither now, nor ever, only a deeply humbled, contrite
heart, which would fain fly from this world!"
"But is this world so unlovely that one would fain try Heaven, while
there are people who can be relied on under any circumstances!"
"Yes" replied the countess bitterly, but the sweetness of the true
warmth of feeling revealed through her friend's humor was reviving and
strengthening to her brain and heart. In his society it seemed as if
there was neither pain nor woe on earth, as if all gloomy spirits must
flee from his unruffled calmness. His apparent coldness produced the
effect of champagne frappe, which, ice-cold when drunk, warms the whole
frame.
"Oh, thank Heaven, that you are here--I have missed you sorely," she
said from the depths of her soul. "Oh, my friend, what is to be done--I
am helpless without you!"
"So much the better for me, if I am indispensable to you--you know that
is the goal of my desires! But dearest friend--you are suffering and I
cannot aid you because I do not know the difficulty! What avail is a
physician, who cures only the symptoms, not the disease. You are simply
bungling about on your own responsibility and every one knows that is
the worst thing a sick person can do. Consumptives use the hunger-cure,
anaemics resort to blood letting. You, my dear Madeleine, I think, do
the same thing. Mortification, when your vital strength is waning,
moral blood-letting, while the heart needs food and warmth. What kind
of cure is it to be up all night long and wander about in cold
churches, with the thermometer marking below freezing, early in the
morning. I should advise you to edit a book on the physiology of the
nerves. You are like the man in the fairy-tale who wanted to learn to
shiver." An involuntary smile hovered about the countess' lips.
"Duke--your humor is beginning to conquer. No doubt you are right in
many things, but you do not know the state of my mind. My life is
destroyed, the axe is laid at the root, happiness, honor--all are
lost."
"For Heaven's sake, what has happened to thus overwhelm you?" asked the
duke, still in the most cheerful mood.
She could not tell him the truth and pleaded some incident at court as
an excuse. Then in a few words she told him of the queen's displeasure,
the malice of her enemies, her imperilled position.
"And do you take this so tragically?" The prince laughed aloud: "Pardon
me, _chere amie_--but one can't help laughing! A woman like you to
despair because a few stiff old court sycophants look askance at you,
and the queen does not understand you which, with the dispositions you
both have, was precisely what might have been expected. It is too
comical! It is entirely my own fault--I ought to have considered
it--but I expected you to show more feminine craft and diplomacy. That
you disdained to employ the petty arts which render one a _Persona
grata_ at court is only an honor to you, and if a few fops presumed to
adopt an insolent manner to you, they shall receive a lesson which
will teach them that _your_ honor is _mine_! Nay, it ought to amuse
you, to feign death awhile and see how the mice will all come out and
dance around you to scatter again when the lioness awakes. Do you
talk of destroyed happiness and roots to which the axe is laid? Oh,
women--women! You can despair over a plaything! For this position at
court could never be aught save a toy to you!"
"But to retire thus in shame and disgrace--would _you_ endure it--if it
should happen to you? Ought not a woman to be as sensitive concerning
her honor as a man?"
"I don't think your honor will suffer, because the restraint of court
life does not suit you! Or is it because you do not understand the
queen? Why, surely persons are not always sympathetic and avoid one
another without any regret; does the fact become so fateful because one
of you wears a crown? In that case I beg you to remember that a crown
is hovering over your head also--a crown that is ready to descend
whenever that head will receive it, and that you will then be in a
position to address Her Majesty as 'chere cousine!' You, a Princess von
Prankenberg, a Countess Wildenau, fly like a rebuked child at an
ungracious glance from the queen and her court into a corner of a
church?" He shook his head. "There must be something else. What is it?
I shall never learn, but you cannot deceive me!"
The countess was greatly disconcerted. She tried to find another
plausible pretext for her mood and, like all natures to whom deception
is not natural, said precisely what betrayed her: "I am anxious about
the Wildenaus--they are only watching for the moment when they can
compromise me unpunished, and if the queen withdraws her favor, they
need show me no farther consideration."
The duke frowned. "Ah! ah!"--he said slowly, under his breath: "What do
you fear from the Wildenaus, how can they compromise you?"
The countess, startled, kept silence. She saw that she had betrayed
herself.
"Madeleine"--he spoke calmly and firmly--"everything must now be
clearly understood between us. What connection was there between
Wildenau and that mysterious boy? I must know, for I see that that is
the quarter whence the danger which you fear is threatening you, and I
must know how to avert it--you have just heard that _your_ honor is
_mine_.' There was a shade of sternness in his tone, the sternness of
an resolve to take this weak, wavering woman under his protection.
"The child"--she faltered, trembling from head to foot--"ah, no--there
is nothing more to be feared from him--he is dead!"
"Dead?" asked the duke gently. "Since when?"
"Since yesterday!" And the proud countess, sobbing uncontrollably, sank
upon his breast.
A long silence followed.
The duke passed his arm around her and let her weep her fill. "My poor
Madeleine--I understand everything." An indescribable emotion filled
the hearts of both. Not another word was exchanged.
The carriage rolled up to the entrance of the Wildenau palace. Her
little cold hands clasped his beseechingly.
"Do not desert me!" she whispered hurriedly.
"Less than ever!" he replied gravely and firmly.
"Her Highness is ill!" he said to the servants who came hurrying out
and helped the tottering woman up the steps. She entered the boudoir,
where the duke himself removed her cloak. It was a singular sight--the
haughty figure in full evening dress, adorned with jewels, in the light
of the dawning day--like some beautiful spirit of the night, left
behind by her companions who had fled from the first sunbeams, and now
stood terrified, vainly striving to conceal herself in darkness. "Poor
wandering sprite, where is the home your tearful eyes are seeking?"
said the prince, overwhelmed by pity as he saw the grief-worn face.
"Yes, Madeleine, you are too beautiful for the broad glare of day. Such
visions suit the veil of evening--the magical lustre of drawing-rooms!
By day one feels as if the night had been robbed of an elf, who
having lost her wings by the morning light was compelled to stay
among common mortals." Carried away by an outburst of feeling, he
approached her with open arms. A strange conflict of emotion was
seething in her breast. She had longed for him, as for the culture she
had despised--she felt that she could not live without him, that
without him she could not exorcise the spirits she had conjured up to
destroy her, her ear listened with rapture to the expression of love in
cultured language, but when he strove to approach her--it seemed as if
that unapproachable something which had cried "Noli me tangere!" had
established its throne in her own heart since she had knelt among the
beggars early that morning, and now, in spite of herself, cried in its
solemn dignity from her lips the "Noli me tangere" to another.
And, without words, the duke understood it, respected her mute denial,
and reverently drew back a step.
"Do you not wish to change your dress, you are utterly exhausted. If it
will be a comfort to you to have me stay, I will wait till you have
regained your strength. Then I will beg permission to breakfast with
you!" he said with his wonted calmness.
"Yes, I thank you!" she answered--with a two-fold meaning, and left the
room with a bearing more dignified than the duke had ever seen, as
though she had an invisible companion of whom she was proud.