Part 57 (1/2)
There was no reply; not a word was heard from the unhappy baroness.
”You see, your highness,” whispered the baron, turning to the veiled lady, ”it is as I told you. All prayers are in vain; she does not leave her room; she will die of grief.”
”No, she will not die,” said the lady, ”she is young, and youth survives all grief. Let me try if I cannot induce her to admit us.”
And she knocked at the door with bold fingers, and exclaimed: ”Pray, f.a.n.n.y, open the door, and let me come in. It is I, Princess Eibenberg; it is I, your friend, Marianne Meier; I want to see my dear f.a.n.n.y Itzig.”
Every thing remained silent; nothing stirred behind that locked door.
Marianne removed her veil, and showed her proud, pale countenance to the baron.
”Baron,” she said, gravely, ”at this hour I forgive you the insult and contempt you hurled at me five years ago on your wedding-day. Fate has avenged me and punished you cruelly, for I see that you have suffered a great deal during the last three days. My heart does not bear you any ill-will now, and I will try to restore your beautiful and unhappy wife to you, and to console her. But I must request you to leave this room. I know a charm, by which I shall decoy f.a.n.n.y from that room; but in order to do so I must be alone, and n.o.body, save herself, must be able to hear me.”
”Very well, I will go,” said the baron, mournfully. ”But permit me first to ask you to do me a favor. My request will prove to you the confidence I repose in you. Please do not tell f.a.n.n.y that you saw me sad and deeply moved; do not intimate any thing to her about my own grief.”
”She will perceive herself, from your pale face and hollow cheeks, poor baron!” exclaimed Marianne.
”No, she is not accustomed to look at me attentively; it will escape her,” said the baron, sadly, ”and I would not have it appear as though I were suffering by her grief, which I deem but natural and just. I beg you, therefore, to say nothing about me.”
”I shall fulfil your wish,” said Marianne. ”f.a.n.n.y will, perhaps, thank you one day for the delicacy with which you are now behaving toward her.
But go now, so that I may call her.”
The baron left the room, and Marianne returned to the door. ”f.a.n.n.y,”
she said, ”come to me, or open the door and let me walk in. I have to deliver to you a message and a letter from Prince Charles von Lichtenstein.”
Now a low cry from the cabinet was heard; the bolt was drawn back, the door opened, and Baroness Arnstein appeared on the threshold. Her face was as pale as marble; her eyes, reddened by weeping, lay deeply in their orbits; her black, dishevelled hair fell down on her back like a long mourning veil. She was still beautiful and lovely, but hers was now the beauty of a Magdalen.
”You bring me a message from him?” she asked, in a low, tremulous voice, and with tearful eyes.
”Yes, f.a.n.n.y,” said Marianne, scarcely able to overcome her own emotion, ”I bring you his last love-greetings. He believed that he would fall, and on that fatal morning, before repairing to the duelling-grounds, he paid me a visit. We had long been acquainted and intimate; both of us had a great, common goal in view; both of us were pursuing the same paths; this was the origin of our acquaintance. He knew, too, that I had been a friend of yours from your childhood, and he therefore intrusted to me his last message to you. Here, f.a.n.n.y, this small box contains all the little souvenirs and love-tokens which he has received from you, and which he deemed much too precious to destroy or to take into his grave; hence he requests you to preserve them. They consist of withered flowers which you once gave him, of a ribbon which you lost, of a few notes which you wrote to him, and from which the malicious and slanderous world might perceive the harmless and innocent character of your intercourse, and, last, of your miniature, painted by the prince himself, from memory. This casket the prince requests you to accept as his legacy. It is a set of pearls, an heirloom of his family, which his dying mother once gave to him in order to adorn with it his bride on his wedding-day. The prince sends it to you and implores you to wear it as a souvenir from him, because you were the bride of his heart. And here, f.a.n.n.y, here is a letter from him, the last lines he ever wrote, and they are addressed to you.”
The baroness uttered a cry of joy; seizing the paper with pa.s.sionate violence, she pressed it to her lips, and knelt down with it.
”I thank Thee, my G.o.d, I thank Thee!” she murmured, in a low voice.
”Thou hast sent me this consolation! Thou dost not want me to die of despair!”
And now, still remaining on her knees, she slowly unfolded the paper and read this last glowing farewell, this last tender protestation of his love, with which the prince took leave of her.
Marianne stood, with folded arms, in a bay window, watching her friend with grave, sympathetic eyes, and beheld the pallor and blushes which appeared in quick succession on her cheeks, the impetuous heaving of her bosom, the tremor of her whole frame, and the tears pouring down like rivers from f.a.n.n.y's eyes on the paper, with a mingled feeling of pity and astonishment.
”It must be beautiful to be able to love in such a manner,” she thought.
”Beautiful, too, to be able to suffer thus. Enviable the women living with their hearts and deriving from them alone their happiness and grief. Such a lot has not fallen to MY share, and I am almost afraid that I do not love any thing but myself. My life is concentrated in my head, and my blood only rushes from the latter to my heart. Who is more to be pitied, f.a.n.n.y with the grief of her love, or I, who will never know such a grief? But she has wept now, and her tears might finally cause me to weep, too, and to awaken my love. That must not be, however.
One who has to pursue great plans, like myself, must keep a cool head and a cold heart.”
And she approached with quick steps the baroness, who was yet on her knees, reading and re-reading the farewell letter of the prince.
”Rise from your knees, f.a.n.n.y,” she said, almost imperiously. ”You have paid the tribute of your tears to the departed friend, you have wept for him for three days; now bury the past in your heart and think of your future, my poor girl.”
”My future?” said f.a.n.n.y, permitting her friend to raise her gently. ”My future is broken and darkened forever, and there is a cloud on my name, which will never leave it. Oh, why is there no convent for the Jewess, no lonely cell whither she might take refuge, with her unhappiness and disgrace?”
”Do as I have done,” said Marianne; ”let the whole world be your convent, and your reception-room the cell in which you do penance, by compelling men to kneel before you and adore you, instead of kneeling yourself, and mortifying your flesh. Lay your unhappiness and your disgrace like a halo around your head, and boldly meet the world with open eyes and a proud mien. If you were poor and nameless I should seriously advise you to become a Catholic, and to take refuge in a convent. But you are rich; you bear a distinguished, aristocratic name; your husband is able to give sumptuous dinner-parties; consequently people will pardon his wife for having become the heroine of an unfortunate romance, and they will take good care not to turn their backs on nor to point their fingers at you; and whenever you pa.s.s them in the street, not to laugh scornfully and tell your history in an audible voice. I, my child, formerly had to bear such contumely and humiliation, and I took a solemn oath at that time that I would revenge myself upon this world, which believed it had a right to despise me--that I would revenge myself by becoming its equal. And I have fulfilled my oath; I am now a princess and a highness. The proud world that once scorned me now bows to me; the most virtuous and aristocratic ladies do not deem it derogatory to their dignity to appear in my reception-room; the most distinguished princes and cavaliers court the friends.h.i.+p and favor of the Princess von Eibenberg, nee Marianne Meier.