Part 45 (1/2)

But man! if he is not exceptionally a prince, they do not make much ceremony with him in life. At school, at the university, he may, if luck favors him, have so-called friends who help him to bear existence; but he has no sooner entered upon actual life, than the host of friends is gone and forever, and he stands alone; he must bear alone his sorrows, his necessities, and what is almost as bad, his joys. Society opens for him; but when?--after he has succeeded; and until then?--till then he has to journey along a weary, dusty road, without shade and without resting-place, which robs him of the best part of his life's strength, and his life's joy. But if he succeeds, he is chastised with scorpions, though he was before chastised only with whips. Even his friends become now his rivals; and he finds himself reduced to lean on his own strength, his own courage, facing a world in arms, a world without pity, delighting in his failures, and at best indifferent. And oh! what bliss, if now, in this fearful crowd, a soft warm hand seizes his own, and a dear voice says to him, 'Be strong! persevere! if all abandon you, I will not abandon you; if others are envious of your triumphs, they will make me unspeakably happy; and if you fail in your work and they scoff and scorn you, or if you succeed and they pa.s.s you with cold indifference, then you shall rest your weary head on this bosom, then I will cool your feverish brow with my kisses, I will pour the precious balm of good, compa.s.sionate, comforting words into your poor, torn heart.' Oh, thrice happy man; now let the world do its worst, you tremble not, you fear not! In your wife's love you have the point of Archimedes, from which you can move a world.

”And thus I have found more than one man in my life who was attached to his wife with a love which was simply unbounded, which burnt with the steady light of the north star, unchangeable, through the night of his life. And certainly, when we find in history an Arnold Winkelried, who defied death and made an opening for freedom with his body--did he do it for freedom's sake? Yes! For his country's sake? Yes! But above all, he did it for the sake of wife and children, who were to him more than freedom and country and life itself.”

Melitta let the book drop into her lap and looked thoughtfully down; then she puts it again on the table, rises and takes an alb.u.m from a bureau, with which she sits down once more at the table. In the alb.u.m there are pencil sketches, and sketches in charcoal and sepia, of landscapes and portraits, etc. She has not had the alb.u.m in her hands since last summer, and she has not taken it out now to draw or to paint. She searches till she comes to a loose leaf, upon which the profile of a man is lightly sketched in bold outlines. In the corner are the letters A. V. O., and the date, July, 1844. The leaf has not come loose of itself; it has evidently been torn out. What unnecessary trouble we give ourselves by indulging in a moment's caprice! now the detached leaf has to be carefully glued upon another! Well! it looks quite well again; but alas! there the name and the date have been cut off. What is to be done? name and date must be upon every sketch. The young widow takes a pencil and writes: Adalbert von Oldenburg; the 22 November, 1847; then she closes the alb.u.m, puts it back in the bureau, and goes to the window.

It has become nearly dark, and instead of single flakes as before, the snow is falling pretty thick; nor does it melt now on the ground, but has already spread a thin, white cover over the lawn. Melitta begins to be troubled about the long absence of Julius. Perhaps he has had after all an accident; or perhaps it was the old man. She reproaches herself for having allowed the boy to ride out so late; she is angry at Baumann, that he at least has not been more prudent. And Oldenburg, too, is not coming. If he were here she would ask him to ride out and meet the two. How cheerfully he would do it!

She goes, seriously troubled, to the dining-room, to the right of the garden-room, from the windows of which she can see for a short distance the road which leads through the wood past Grenwitz to Cona. The snow is now falling so fast that she can hardly recognize any more the edge of the spruce forest, although it is only a few hundred yards off. She opens the window and leans far out, unmindful of the flakes which fall on her dark hair and melt on her brow. Was not that a horse's hoof?

There they are coming out of the forest, one, two, three dark figures: Oldenburg, the old man, and between them Julius; Almansor and Brownlocks in full trot, the pony between them at full gallop so as to keep up. Melitta waves her handkerchief and calls out, and Julius answers with a hearty Holloa! and whips the pony across the neck, whereupon the pony shakes his s.h.a.ggy head indignantly and begins to race so furiously that he finally beats his long-legged rivals, after all, by the length of his own nose.

The hors.e.m.e.n leap from their saddles. Julius runs up to the window and calls: ”I was the first, after all, mamma!”

”Yes,” says mamma, ”only make haste and come in, and tell Uncle Oldenburg not to busy himself so long with Almansor's saddle.”

CHAPTER IX.

It was after tea. Julius had gone to bed. Old Baumann had removed the tea-things, and then gone out, casting a benevolent glance at his mistress and her visitor. Melitta and Oldenburg were alone in the ”red-room.”

”Now tell me candidly, Adalbert, why you are so out of humor to-day,”

said Melitta, who sat on the sofa, while the baron was slowly walking up and down the room, as was his habit. ”I am not out of humor.”

”Well then, troubled?”

”That perhaps. I had a letter this afternoon from Birkenhain.”

”That is strange. I have just been writing to him this afternoon.”

”Have you heard from him lately?” said Oldenburg, pausing in his walk and looking kindly at Melitta.

”No; why?”

”Hem!”

”Is that an answer?”

”Certainly, and a very significative. 'Hem!' means a good deal.”

”In this case, for instance?”

”Do you know that we were in all probability at the same time in Fichtenau when Czika and Xen.o.bia as well as Oswald were all there, and we never knew it?”

Melitta blushed deeply, and did not at once know what answer to give.

Oldenburg, however, did not give her time to reply, but drew Birkenhain's letter from his pocket, sat down by the table, opposite Melitta, and said:

”You see, Birkenhain writes, after having advised me, at my request, regarding Julius's health--'Julius must be spared all studying till New Year'--as follows:

”'You have so often and so kindly inquired in your letters after Professor Berger, dear baron, that it will interest you to hear again of this extraordinary man, especially after having made his personal acquaintance here at my house last summer. You may recollect from what he told you in your conversations with him, that his insanity belongs to the cla.s.s of philosophical aberrations, and that he defended his fixed idea of the absolute non-existence of all things--or rather the great original Naught as he called it--with all the erudition and all the ingenuity which he possesses in so large a degree. My hope to be able to restore this distinguished man in a short time, was unfortunately ill-founded, and I confess that the method which I pursued in his case was, perhaps, not the correct one. I intended to arouse in him, by seclusion, withdrawal of books, etc., a sensation of weariness and loneliness, and through these a desire to see company, to exchange thoughts; in one word, a fondness for life. But I had immensely underrated the fund of inner life which was at the disposal of my patient. He could have lived for years on the treasures of his mind, and the only effect of my efforts was, that he gave himself up more fully than ever to his bottomless, original Naught. Nevertheless, I still hoped for some improvement, a reaction which I thought could not fail to arise in so vigorous a mind as Berger's. About that time--I think it was the very day on which you and Frau von Berkow were here, and I forgot to tell you in the hurry in which you were, anything about these matters which interested me deeply--a visitor, who had announced to me his desire to see Professor Berger, came very _apropos_. This was a young man called Doctor Stein'”--Oldenburg did not look up as he came to the name--”'of whom a colleague in Grunwald, with whom he was travelling, had told me that he had been Berger's favorite and most intimate friend. I hoped the very best results from this visit--a hope which I must confess was considerably weakened when I made the acquaintance of this Doctor Stein. I found him a remarkably handsome, distinguished-looking man, who, however, in spite of evidently rare talents and thorough cultivation, seemed to be completely at odds with the world and himself, as we find this to be the case, unfortunately, but too frequently, more or less, in our most gifted men, thanks to the inactive, thoughtless times in which we live. I ought to have been able to tell myself, if I had maturely reflected, that Berger would not have attached himself so heartily to this man just before the breaking out of his insanity, if he had not also been a hypochondriac. But here he was, and the thing could not be helped now; besides, I had given Doctor Stein very precise instructions before I allowed him to see Berger, and awaited with great interest the result of this interview, at which I was purposely not present. The result was strange indeed.