Part 51 (1/2)

With eyes beaming with pleasure he offered Elise his hand, but hers remained calm and cold, and her voice did not tremble or falter as she said: ”I am a bride, but not yours, Prince Stratimojeff;” and extending her hand to Bertram, she continued: ”This is my husband!

To-day, for the third time, he has saved me--saved me from you!”

Prince Feodor felt annihilated, and staggered back as if struck by an electric shock. ”Elise! is this the way you reward my love?” asked he sadly, after a pause. ”Is this the troth you plighted me?”

She stepped up close to him, and said softly: ”I kept my heart faithful to my Feodor, but he ceded it to Prince Stratimojeff. Elise is too proud to be the wife of a man who owes his t.i.tle of prince to the fact of being the favorite of an empress.”

She turned and was about to leave the room, but Feodor held her back.

No reserve, no concealment were any longer possible to him. He only felt that he was infinitely wretched, and that he had lost the hope of his life. ”Elise,” he said, in that soft, sad tone, which had formerly charmed her heart, ”I came to you to save me; you have thrust me back into an abyss. Like a drowning man I stretched out my hand to you, that in your arms I might live a new life. But Fate is just. It hunts me back pitilessly from this refuge, and I must and will sink. Well, then, though the waves of life close over me, my last utterance will be your name.”

Elise found herself capable of the cruel courage of listening to his pathetic words with a smile: ”You will yet have time to think over your death,” said she, with proud composure; and, turning to her father, she continued, ”My business with this gentleman is finished.

Now, father, begin yours.” She gave her hand to Bertram, and, without honoring the prince with another look, she left the room with her betrothed.

”And now,” said Gotzkowsky coldly, ”now, sir, let us proceed to our affairs. Will you have the kindness to follow me to my counting-room?

You have come to Berlin to rob me of my daughter and my property! You have been unsuccessful in the one; try now the other.”

”That I will, that I shall!” cried the prince, gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth, and anger flas.h.i.+ng from his eyes. ”Elise has been pitiless, I will be so too.”

”And I would hurl your pity from me as an insult,” said Gotzkowsky, ”if you offered it.”

”We are then enemies, for life and death--”

”Oh, no! We are two tradesmen who bargain and haggle with each other about the profits. There is nothing more between us.” He opened the door and called in his secretary and his cas.h.i.+er. ”This gentleman,”

said Gotzkowsky, with cutting coldness, ”is the agent of Russia, sent here to negotiate with me, and in case I cannot pay, to adopt the most severe measures toward me. You, gentlemen, will transact this business with him. You have the necessary instructions.” He then turned to the prince, who stood breathless and trembling from inward excitement, burning with anger and pain, and leaning against the wall to keep himself from falling. ”Prince,” said he, ”you will be paid. Take these thirty thousand dollars; they are the fortune of my son-in-law. He has given it cheerfully to release us from you. Here, further, are my daughter's diamonds. Take them to your empress as a fit memorial of your German deeds, and my pictures will cover the balance of my indebtedness to you.”[1]

”It is too much, it is too much!” cried Prince Feodor; and as if hunted by the furies, he rushed out, his fists clinched, ready to crush any one who should try to stop him.

[Footnote 1: Gotzkowsky paid his debt to Russia with thirty thousand dollars cash; a set of diamonds; and pictures which were taken by Russia at a valuation of eighty thousand dollars, and formed the first basis of the imperial gallery at St. Petersburg. Among these were some of the finest paintings of t.i.tian, some of the best pieces of Rubens, and one of Rembrandt's most highly executed works--the portrait of his old mother.]

CHAPTER XVII.

TARDY GRAt.i.tUDE.

John Gotzkowsky, the rich merchant of Berlin, had determined to struggle no longer with Fate; no longer to undergo the daily martyrdom of an endangered honor, of a threatened name. Like the brave Sickenhagen, he said to himself, ”Better a terrible end than an endless terror,” and he preferred casting himself down the abyss at once, to be slowly hurled from cliff to cliff. He had given notice to the authorities of his failure, and of his intention of making over all his property to his creditors. He was now waiting to hand over the a.s.sets to the a.s.signees, and leave the house which was no longer his.

Not secretly, however, but openly, in the broad daylight, he would cross the threshold to pa.s.s through the streets of that town which was so much indebted to him, and which had formerly hailed him as her savior and preserver. It was inevitable--he must fall, but his fall should at the same time be his revenge. For the last time he would open the state apartments of his house; for the last time receive his guests. But these guests would be the legal authorities, who were to be his heirs while he was yet alive, and who were to consign his name to oblivion before death had inscribed it on any tomb-stone.

The announcement of his fall had spread rapidly through the town, and seemed at last to have broken through the hardened crust which collects around men's hearts. The promptings of conscience seemed for a moment to overcome the voice of egotism. The magistrates were ashamed of their ingrat.i.tude; and even the Jews of the mint, Ephraim and Itzig, had perceived that it would have been better to have avoided notoriety, and to have raised up the humbled Gotzkowsky, than to have trodden him in the dust entirely.

Instead of the officials whom he had expected, however, a committee of the Council, accompanied by Ephraim and Itzig, entered his house and asked to speak with him. He received them in his apartments of state, with his children at his side. His figure was erect, his head proudly raised, and he regarded them, not as an unfortunate, downcast man, but as a superior would regard his inferiors; and they lowered their eyes before his penetrating glances, ashamed and conscious of wrong.

”The Council have sent us,” said one of the aldermen.

”I have no further business with the Council,” said Gotzkowsky, contemptuously.

”Gotzkowsky, do not be angry with us any longer,” said the aldermen, almost imploringly. ”The magistracy, in acknowledgment of your great services to the city, are ready and willing to pay the sum you demand.” Gotzkowsky shook his head proudly. ”I am no longer ready to accept it. The term has expired; you can no longer buy me off; you remain my debtors.”