Chapter IV (2)

"Blume! you had all rejected me, I stood alone in the wide world, my heart, that could love so warmly, so boundlessly, was desolate and bleeding. Each word of Mannsfield's dropped balsam upon the wounds of my soul: an emotion, so profound, as could only be excited in me at a time when still credulous and undeceived, I dared live for a sweet delusion, thrilled through me; my whole heart expanded to his words, I pressed the hand of the noble soldier, and hot tears rolled from my eyes. 'Now if you are strong enough, and talking does not try you,' continued Mannsfield, 'let me learn the name of my saviour. What is thy escutcheon, where is thy home?'

"Drops of agony stood on my forehead. Once more the past moved in swift flight over my soul, all seemed to me a confused dream! I fought a hard fight with myself; chance had led me to a powerful grateful friend, could I venture to narrate to him frankly and unconstrainedly my life's history? Had I not reason to fear that the renowned hero, the General, the Emperor's favourite would turn scornfully from me? from me, a renegade Jew, an outcast of his brethren, a man branded from his birth? Mannsfield remarked my hesitation. 'I will not urge you,' he continued after a pause of surprise: 'perhaps a mystery hangs over your name--I am sorry, but be you what or who you will you will ever remain dear to me--a thought suddenly flashed across him. Perhaps you are a Protestant? perhaps an adherent of the Union?' he exclaimed, 'ah how little you know Mannsfield! By God Almighty--be you who you will--you are prized by and dear to me.... Shall I speak to you in confidence? I am at the bottom of my heart not averse to the Protestantism, which I now do battle against under the standard of my glorious Imperial master:--But I am rivetted to the illustrious House of Austria by a bond of gratitude: I was brought up at the Court of my godfather the Archduke Ernest; I have to thank my Imperial lord and master for all that I am, and why should I conceal from you, my preserver, that for which I have so often been compelled to blush, and what half Germany knows.... I was not born in lawful wedlock, and I only owe it to the especial favour and grace of the monarch, that he permits me to enjoy the name and rank of my father, that he has legitimised me, that he has pledged his Imperial word as soon as the war which we are now waging is over, to invest me with all my father's possessions. Mannsfield's words made a tremendous impression upon me. Blind chance had wonderfully guided me. That the birth of this man, whom I had saved, who was soliciting my friendship and love should have been first legitimised by the absolute command of the Emperor, that I had saved him while my heart was overflowing with hate, that he, the brave lion-hearted hero who had staked his life thousands of times for his Emperor, his colours, his glory, laid such stress upon it, all this had such a decisive influence upon me, that I broke the deep silence, which I had firmly intended to preserve, and revealed to Mannsfield my whole past history. Mannsfield listened to me with the warmest infelt sympathy. 'You are alone in the world,' he said, after I had ended, in the harmonious accents of his powerful voice, 'you have saved my life.... Your secret shall for ever be preserved in my breast--will you be my brother?' Mannsfield gazed at me out of his deep dark eyes so cordially, so lovingly. My heart beat as if it would burst. Mannsfield despised me not, Mannsfield did not hold out to me only a poor common oblation of compassion: no, he offered me all his great heart--could I refuse the too-bountiful present? Tears, that rolled from my eyes, were my only answer. We sealed the compact with a long fraternal embrace.--Eight days afterwards I was entirely recovered, and was presented to the assembled officers as a new companion in arms at a banquet given in Mannsfield's honour. They had named me at my baptism Gottfried. But God was no longer in my heart, peace was never in my soul, I banished both from my name, and called myself Otto Bitter. I took service in the Imperial army under that perfectly unknown name.--The vast wealth that I had inherited from my grandfather supplied the means of equipping at my own cost some troops of cavalry, in return for which I was appointed to their command. Fortune, which favoured my arms, in conjunction with Mannsfield's inexhaustible affection for me, quickly promoted me from step to step and allowed me to take conspicuous rank in the army under Arch-duke Leopold which was detailed to operate against the Unionists in the Cleves-Juliers district. The continuance of the war had fully occupied me, but spite of the fact that my past history was to remain a mystery to every one except Mannsfield, I had succeeded in obtaining tidings of thee and thine. I was indeed far from you, but in spirit I stood ever near you, I never lost sight of you for a moment--after a series of battles the Protestant Union at length concluded a peace with the Emperor, in order to oppose their whole force to the newly formed Catholic confederacy, the League. I was free, I wished to hurry to Worms, to appear before thee and thine, and settle accounts with you--but a new and unexpected turn in the fortunes of my friend Mannsfield hindered me. Mannsfield had confidently expected that the Emperor at the end of the campaign would have invested him with the possessions of his deceased father who had been Stadtholder in Luxembourg. The war of succession in Juliers and Cleves was over; the complication in Alsace arranged: Mannsfield had rendered the Emperor substantial services; he had shed his blood upon the field of battle; he had squandered his rich maternal heritage in warlike armaments, without demanding compensation for it: it was only through Mannsfield's zeal, through his high military talents and spirit of self-sacrifice that the Imperial General-in-chief the Arch-duke Leopold had been enabled to make head successfully against a superior force. Mannsfield now applied for the desired investment, but was shamefully refused. His proud spirit could not brook the slight which was inflicted on him, he retired from the Imperial service, and devoted his zeal and victorious sword to the evangelical Union. It was perfectly indifferent to me, for whom or what I fought.--A firm indissoluble bond of friendship united me to Mannsfield, I could not hesitate a moment, I ranged myself by Mannsfield's side. Victory was tied to Mannsfield's standard. I was his truest and best companion in arms, the fortune of war was favourable to me; loved by Mannsfield, idolised by the troops I now became the first officer in his army.--In the meanwhile a persecution of the Jews had broken out in Frankfurt stirred up by Vettmilch, Gerngross and Schopp. The Jewish quarter was plundered and wasted, the life of your brethren threatened. The rabble at Worms wished to follow the example of Frankfurt and a pretext was easily found. Your family, the Rottenbergs, had some, I do not doubt well grounded claim, against a Frankfurt patrician; he died, and his son who had been admitted to the rights and privileges of a citizen at Worms found it most convenient to get rid of the obligation into which his father had entered, first by disputing the demand as usurious, but afterwards the receipt for the debt as forged. The honour, property, safety of your family were all equally endangered. The workmen at Worms, friendly to a hasty course as it was a question of using violence against the Jews, looked upon the private suit as a public concern and demanded from the Imperial Chamber at Spires the immediate expulsion of all Jews from Worms. They were sent back and ordered to follow the usual course of justice in reference to your affair. But the Imperial judges were stern and just, and there was no doubt therefore, that you would win your cause. The trades, irritated to the highest degree by the failure of their plan, demanded that you should make a sacrifice of your claim, and moreover in order to save the honour of their fellow citizen should declare the proofs to be forged. You made up your minds to lose the sum, which was a considerable one, but no one could persuade you to make a false dishonourable confession. Vain was the pressure of the workmen, vain the prayers of your brethren in Worms, who were blind enough not to detect the clumsy artifice and believed in their simplicity that the artisans of Worms would be appeased by this declaration, and undertake no further hostilities against the Jews. You remained firm and in the week before Easter the wild storm broke loose. The magistrates, though with the best intentions, too feeble to protect you, were obliged to look on bewildered and inactive, while the Jews were expelled, their ancient synagogues demolished their burial ground desecrated.--It was only through the immense exertions of the Bishop, who only arrived in Worms late in the evening of that hapless day, that the wild fury of the populace was at length bridled. A general plunder was prevented, too late however for you, against whom the popular hatred had first vented itself. Your house was entirely demolished, you were plundered, your father was roughly handled. You had only escaped a certain death by speedy flight. Your father died from the effects of the fright and ill-usage that he had experienced.--The Frankfurt rebels were subdued by force of arms. An Imperial commissioner punished the guilty and the Jews returned in triumph to the city. In Worms also the insurgents soon surrendered to the Imperial troops, the Jews were recalled and honourably re-instated in their ancient residences. But you never returned. The community of Worms maintained that the calamity was attributable to your obstinacy, that much worse might have happened, that you should have sacrificed your honour and pride to the common-weal. The community excluded you from the midst of them. Poor and wretched, concealing your shame under an assumed name, you were forced to seize the beggar's staff and start on a wide uncertain wandering. The punishment was hard, but you had deserved it for your behaviour to me!"

Blume had again silently listened to Gabriel without interrupting him. It seemed to her almost as if he took pleasure in the pleasing broad circumstantiality of the story as he told it. As if he took a pleasure in embodying in living sounding words his whole past, that he must for years have kept sealed in his heart. As he spoke of that time when he was far from her, he seemed to become more calm. A mild conciliatory spirit seemed to come over him, when he referred to Mannsfield and the firm bond of friendship that united their hearts to one another. When he spoke of the persecution of the innocent Jews in Frankfurt and Worms it seemed to her as if love for his former brethren was not yet altogether dead in him, as if a feeling of compassion still stirred in the depths of his almost inscrutable soul. She already yielded to the delusive hope that Gabriel was only come to forgive her and had only wished to give her a fright by calling up the memory of the past. The earnest warning was to serve only to annihilate her by the full weight of his magnanimity;--but when he once more probed with rough hand her bleeding wounds, when he once more spoke of punishment, thought of retaliation, she again sunk down, covering her beautiful face with both hands. Gabriel did not notice it. "From that moment I lost all trace of you. I had joined fortune with my friend Mannsfield, and was hurried from one end of Germany to the other. Everywhere I looked sharply out for thee. If I came into the neighbourhood of a Jewish community, I often exchanged armour and helm for cloak and cap, in order to obtain admittance into it as a travelling student that I might search thee out. When my disguise could not be kept secret from those about me, a silly foolish love-affair with a Jewish girl served as an excuse for it. My inquiries were in vain, but I doubted not, I was convinced that I must some day find you.... We were just on the point of hurrying off to the assistance of the Duke of Savoy, a member of the Union, when suddenly the flame of war was kindled in Bohemia. The duke no longer required reinforcement, it was a matter of indifference to Mannsfield in what quarter he waged war on behalf of Protestantism against the Emperor: we marched therefore at the request of the Bohemian states, who took us into their pay, to Bohemia. Our arrival was immediately illustrated by a victory, we took the strong and disaffected city of Pilsen. The Emperor was exasperated to the highest pitch by the loss of this loyal city, and Mannsfield and I his chief officer, were put under the ban of the Empire. Meanwhile the Bohemians had elected the Palatine Frederick their king. The selection was an unfortunate one. Frederick appointed Anhalt and Hohenlohe commanders-in-chief of his army and Mannsfield remained at Pilsen at a distance from head-quarters in order to escape serving under both of them. We found ourselves badly off. Pay and support, as well from the Union as from the Palatine, failed. Mannsfield was obliged to keep the army on foot without money. To fill up the measure of our misfortunes, that portion of the country in which we were encamped was attached to the Imperial party and we were surrounded by spies.--We were obliged to observe the greatest watchfulness and every one, who afforded the slightest ground for suspecting him of being a spy, was arrested and strictly examined. A travelling Jew was once detained; it was known that the Jews of Prague were zealous and faithful partisans of the imperial faction, it was not impossible, that he was a spy. He was brought before me, I recognised him immediately. He had formerly been with me for some time at the high school at Frankfurt, I had seen him too several times at Worms. My altered situation made me quite irrecognisable. To his astonishment I asked him if he knew anything of your whereabouts, and he reluctantly confessed to me that he had caught a glimpse of the long lost woman in Prague, but that you had timidly shunned any meeting. The poor student had not had the remotest intention of acting as a spy and only wished to travel to Fuerth. I dismissed him, unenlightened, but with a munificent present. It had been suggested long before that I should undertake a journey to Prague in order to petition the king for the arrears of pay, and to talk over a common plan of campaign with Anhalt. I had hitherto put off the troublesome business, but when I learnt that you were at Prague, I declared myself at once ready for the journey. I arrived here and after three days of ineffectual exertion with king and council, I resolved to stay here till I had discovered you.... I had taken up my quarters in the house of an armourer who had once served as sergeant-major in my regiment.--He had become incapable of further service, and had joined the great swarm of foreigners who had come to Prague with the Palatine. He had always been devoted to me and I could reckon upon his fidelity and secrecy..... I once more pretended a love-affair, when I exchanged the dress of a General for that of a student. I went into the Jews-town and assumed the family name of Mar. By a fortunate coincidence I found a lodging in the house of the upper-attendant of the synagogue, Reb Schlome Sachs. Situated outside of the gate of the Ghetto it was peculiarly adapted for the double purpose of my residence here. Immediately on my entrance into the Ghetto too I had, in a really inexplicable way, found favour in the eyes of a usually reserved and maniacal old man, and I felt myself, without being able to give a reason for it, stirred by an unwonted feeling of sympathy for him--perhaps, as I was afterwards obliged to admit, on the ground that his strange madness reminded me of the misfortune of my own life. I was a stranger in the Jewish community of Prague: you lived here quiet and retired under an assumed foreign name. Every enquiry among your co-religionists gave occasion for a well founded suspicion against me, rendered a discovery of my true relation to them possible. It was therefore only through the intermediation of the lunatic that I could hope to discover you: but when I sought him for the second time in his dwelling, I found it shut up, and since the day of my arrival I have never been able to obtain a sight of him. But as I knew that he communicated with nobody, I could at least allege my acquaintance with him, which was concluded in open street, as an excuse for my frequent absence from home, and my landlord Reb Schlome Sachs often believed me to be sympathetically seated by the madman while I was engaged in negotiating with the king and field-marshal about pay in arrear, or campaigns that had miscarried. I ranged through the streets of the Jews-town assiduously, but never saw you. I was almost in despair of finding you here, when a lucky chance led you yesterday to meet me at the threshold of the bathhouse, exactly _yesterday_, when by a concurrence of events I became master of your destiny. Yesterday, after a martyrdom of ten years, I found thee; today I stand before thee...."

Blume had again been listening to Gabriel without uttering a word. He had again, either in self-forgetfulness or mastering his unbridled passion by an astonishing exercise of mental strength been addressing her in the accents of former years. Blume gave way as before to a consoling hope, but Gabriel's last words dispelled all her illusions.

"What do you want of me?" she cried again, lifting herself up and bending involuntarily over the cradle of her child. "What do you want of me? Speak it out, Gabriel! and torture me not to death with protracted anguish...."

"Thou askest what I want?" shouted Gabriel with flashing glance, and his voice sounded like the growling of a thunderstorm: "what I want? _thee!_ thou wert mine, Blume! from thy birth up thou wert destined for me, the covenant which our parents had concluded for us, we confirmed by the bond of love--_thou_ hast loosened the beautiful bond of love, and now Hate binds me to thee! If it is no longer the heaving of thy voluptuous bosom, if it is no longer the waving of thy dark luxurious tresses, if it is no more the flashing of those beautiful love-kindling eyes, or those rosy budding lips which rapturously attract me to thee.... Why then it is the sweet stupifying poison of revenge! you rejected me, you trampled upon me, ... for a sin that I never committed--if the curse of that sin bears heavily upon my wretched tainted existence--I will at least taste the sweetness of the sin.... I will...."

Blume was for a moment motionless from horror, then seized her child impetuously, opened the window and leaned far out of it, as though to call for help--Gabriel seized her by the arm.

"Be still, Blume," he said, "be not afraid, I shall do nothing by brute force. Thou wilt have time for consideration, and thou wilt throw thyself supplicatingly into my arms.... I give you a week for consideration.... but I believe your resolution will be taken sooner.... Eight days hence, Sunday the eighth of November--it is exactly the anniversary of our betrothal--I shall be with you by midnight.... Wilt thou be mine?"

God-forsaken! screamed Blume beside herself with fury, with flaming face and sparkling eyes: "dost thou desire _that_ of me, of me, the wife of another, the devout Jewess, the faithful wife, the tender mother? Yes my resolve is quickly made...."

"It is because you are the wife of another man," interrupted Gabriel, "that I do desire it.--_Wert thou free_, and lying at my feet in all the infinite beauty that neither sorrow nor wretchedness can rob you of, wert thou imploring one glance of love--I should spurn thee from me, as thou didst spurn me,--but the bond of wedlock enchains thee! thou shalt sin, thy hard marble heart shall learn to know the bitter torments of remorse,--and it is because thou art a faithful wife, because thou lovest thy husband, because thou wouldest preserve a father for his child that I expect the fulfilment of my wish."--He drew a packet from his breast-pocket, it contained some small manuscript parchment rolls and a sheet of paper; he handed them in silence to the woman who trembled with rage and grief.

"That is my husband's writing!" shrieked Blume, "those are the texts that he has copied.... God! there is one of my letters. How did you come into possession of these writings? Where is my husband? speak!"

"Read," answered Gabriel, and held out to her Mannsfield's letter which he had received the day before from the ensign. Blume devoured the writing eagerly, but when she came to the last lines, she tottered and was obliged to steady herself by the arm of the chair. The characters danced before her eyes.... "I cannot read it," she said, "do thou read!"

Gabriel read:

"With regard to the above mentioned Jew, whom my outposts arrested, I think that he is innocent. I was obliged to exercise all my authority to prevent his being torn in pieces by the exasperated soldiery, or hanged on the nearest tree; even some of the officers voted for his death. Seeing that the suspicious writings found upon him are according to his own account Hebrew bible-texts and letters from his wife I have sent them to you to be tested, and your report as to the contents of the writings will give him death or freedom.--The whole affair however is so insignificant that you will have no need to detain Michalowitz respecting it. Only in the event of the Jew being a spy, and the contents of the writings therefore of importance to us, will it be necessary for you to send me advice by a trooper: otherwise on account of the insecurity of the roads to Pilsen do not send me any messenger...."

"Now," cried Blume, hastily, "you see, it is not a cipher, it is only texts and my letters. Have you despatched the messenger who will solve the inauspicious misunderstanding?"

"No! My answer will depend on thine.... Will you eight days hence submit yourself to my will?"

"And if I answer no, what will you do?" asked Blume with the utmost eagerness.

"That answer thou wilt never make," replied Gabriel violently, "thou wilt not compel me to an extreme, to the greatest extremity of all.... So, and so only will I be revenged, Blume, force me to no other, to no bloody vengeance.--I will only repay like by like.... you suffered my heart to break.--Come then, I will be the ever living sting of conscience in thy existence--you let me humiliated, deeply, oh infinitely deeply humiliated.--Come now, I will humiliate thee too. But as for me, I had loved thee, had idolized thee, you repaid my love with hate. I am juster than you--I give you hate for hate!... My resolve is unshakeable!"

Blume stood before Gabriel wringing her hands despairingly.--"No, I cannot believe that you will perpetrate the horrible iniquity of writing to Mannsfield a hellish lie that will cause my husband's death. Consider, Gabriel," she continued almost inaudibly, clasping her hands--"indeed I never injured you, never humiliated, never degraded you. It could not be, I could not be your wife, a higher power placed itself between us, could I, could any one help it? I was innocent, thou wert innocent! Oh Gabriel, thou wouldst only terrify me, thou wilt not write the lie to Mannsfield, is it not so."

"Blume, I am armed against thy entreaty.... for long years have I sought thee, for ten years have I been hatching a thought of vengeance, and now that a wonderful chance throws the reins of your destiny into my hands, shall I let the moment pass by unavailed? Shall thy tears befool me? No, Blume, no, every human life must have some attainable aim.--I had no other than revenge!--My resolve remains unalterable."

"You leave me then but the choice between sin and unutterable woe? You are silent? Gabriel," said Blume after a pause suddenly lifting her lovely head.... "You once loved me, now every spark of that feeling, all sympathy is extinguished in your heart, but I, I pity thee in spite of it!... How low art thou fallen, poor Gabriel!--the proud, high-souled Gabriel, who should have been a guiding light to his people, a giant in intellect, contends with a weak woman, one stricken-down with misery, that with her baby in her arms, makes her trembling supplication before him.... and what kind of victory, what a triumph would he win? He would destroy a poor, wornout woman, by means of an abominable shameless lie, than which humanity can conceive nothing more mean.--Gabriel, at this moment I am more wretched and unhappy than any woman upon earth, but--by God Almighty!--I would not for worlds stand before thee, as thou now standest before me!"--

Gabriel stood with folded arms before Blume. The desperate reckless opposition of the helpless woman, especially the last sorrowful cry of her tortured heart had caused him for a moment, but only for a moment to waver; thoughts like lightning flashed through his soul, feelings that he had long believed dead were stirred up in him, for a moment he entertained a thought of foregoing his vengeance, of forgetting the past, of being re-converted--but he had already gone too far, he had broken with all tradition, the future as he had dreamed of it in his youth, seemed to _him lost for ever_--he could never drawback.--His better genius succumbed, the iniquitous passion conquered.

"My resolution is firm and unshakeable," he said, rapidly preparing to go, as if he himself feared lest he should waver again. "Eight days hence I shall be with you by midnight.--Your husband's fate is in your own hands, ponder upon it till then. My resolve is inflexible!"

He folded himself in his mantle and departed--Blume gave way and sobbed aloud.