Chapter VII: The Private Life of Ferdinand Lassalle {185}

Ich habe die Inventur meines Lebens gemacht.
Es war gross, brav, wacker, tapfer und glanzend genug.
Eine kunftige Zeit wird mir gerecht zu warden wissen.

--FERDINAND LASSALLE, _August_ 9, 1864.

I. The Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt.

Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau on April 11, 1825. His parents were of Jewish race, his father a successful silk merchant. From boyhood he was now the tyrant, now the slave of a mother whom he loved and by whom he was adored. Heymann Lassal--his son changed the spelling during his Paris sojourn--appears to have been irritable and tyrannical; and there are some graphic instances in the recently published "Diary" {186} of the differences between them, ending on one occasion in the boy rushing to the river, where his terrified father finds him hesitating on the brink, and becomes reconciled. A more attractive picture of the old man is that told of his visit to his son-in-law, Friedland, who had married Lassalle's sister. Friedland was ashamed of his Jewish origin, and old Lassalle startled the guests at dinner by rising and frankly stating that he was a Jew, that his daughter was a Jewess, and that her husband was of the same race. The guests cheered, but the host never forgave his too frank father-in-law.

Lassalle was a student at Breslau University, and later at Berlin, where he laid the foundation of those Hegelian studies to which he owed his political philosophy. In 1845 he went to Paris, and there secured the friendship of Heine, being included with George Sand in the interesting circle around the "mattress grave" of the sick poet.

Among Heine's letters {187} there are four addressed to Lassalle, now as "Dear and best beloved friend," now as "Dearest brother-in-arms." "Be assured," he says, "that I love you beyond measure. I have never before felt so much confidence in any one." "I have found in no one," he says again, "so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You have good right to be audacious--we others only usurp this Divine right, this heavenly privilege." And to Varnhagen von Ense he writes:--

My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man
of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough
erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration
that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he
combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish
me. . . . In no one have I found united so much enthusiasm and
practical intelligence.

"In every line," says Brandes, "this letter shows the far-seeing student of life, indeed, the prophet!"

Lassalle is not backward in reciprocating the enthusiasm.

"I love Heine," he declares; "he is my second self. What audacity!
what crushing eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when
it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and
destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then
all that is fiercest and most daring. He has the command of all the
range of feeling."

Lassalle's sympathy with Heine never lessened. It was Heine who lost grasp of the intrinsically higher nature of his countryman and co-religionist, and an acute difference occurred, as we shall see, when Lassalle interfered in the affairs of the Countess von Hatzfeldt. Introduced to the Countess by his friend Dr. Mendelssohn, in 1846, Lassalle felt that here in concrete form was scope for all his enthusiasm of humanity, and he determined to devote his life to championing the cause of the oppressed lady. {188} The Countess was the wife of a wealthy and powerful nobleman, who ill-treated her shamefully. He imprisoned her in his castles, refused her doctors and medicine in sickness, and carried off her children. Her own family, as powerful as the Count, had often intervened, and the Count's repentances were many but short-lived. In 1846 matters reached a crisis. The Count wrote to his second son, Paul, asking him to leave his mother. The boy carried this letter to the Countess; and Lassalle relates that, finding the lady in tears, he persuaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. He pledged himself to save her, and for nine years carried on the struggle, with ultimate victory, but with considerable loss of reputation. He first told the story to Mendelssohn and Oppenheim, two friends of great wealth, the latter a Judge of one of the superior courts in Prussia. They agreed to help him; for then, as always, Lassalle's persuasive powers were irresistible. They went with him from Berlin to Dusseldorf, the Count being in that neighbourhood. Von Hatzfeldt was at Aix-la-Chapelle, caught in the toils of a new mistress, the Baroness Meyendorff. Lassalle discovered that she had obtained from the Count a deed assigning to her some property which should in the ordinary course have come to the boy Paul. The Countess, hearing of the disaster which seemed likely to befall her favourite son, made her way into her husband's presence, and in the scene which followed secured a promise that the document should be revoked--destroyed. But no sooner had she left him than the Count returned to the Meyendorff influence, and refused to see his wife again. Soon afterwards it was discovered that the woman had set out for Cologne. Lassalle begged his friends Oppenheim and Mendelssohn, to follow her and, if possible, to ascertain whether the momentous document had actually been destroyed. They obeyed, and reached the hotel at Cologne about the same time as the Baroness. Here they were guilty of an indiscretion, if of nothing worse, for which Lassalle can surely in no way be blamed, but which was used for many a year to tarnish his name. Oppenheim, on his way upstairs, observed a servant with the luggage of the Baroness; among other things a desk or casket of a kind commonly used to carry valuable papers. Thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to obtain a certain document from the brutal Count, he pounced upon the casket when the servant's back was turned. But he had no luggage with him in which to conceal it, and so handed it to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, although fully sensible of the blunder that had been committed, could not desert his friend, and placed the casket in his trunk.

The whole hotel was in an uproar when the Baroness discovered her loss. The friends fled panic-stricken in opposite directions. Suspicion immediately fell upon Dr. Mendelssohn, because his room was seen to have been left in confusion. He was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a railway carriage and fleeing to Paris, leaving his luggage in the hands of the police. In his box some papers were found which incriminated Oppenheim; and Oppenheim, a Judge of one of the superior courts, and the son of a millionaire, was arrested and imprisoned for theft!

Lassalle visited Oppenheim in prison, and extracted from him a promise of silence as to the motive for his conduct. He then threw himself vigorously into the struggle, both in the press and in the law courts. Here he seems to have parted company with Heine, because, as he tells us, "the Baroness Meyendorff was a friend of the Princess de Lieven, and the Princess de Lieven was the mistress of Guizot, and Heine received a pension from Guizot."

Oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and Mendelssohn, who was really innocent of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to Germany. He was, however, tried before the assize court of Cologne, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt obtained a reduction of the sentence to one year, but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave Europe. He went, after his release from prison, to Constantinople, and when the Crimean war broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the march in 1854.

Meanwhile Germany rang for many years with the story of the so-called robbery, and Lassalle's name was even more associated therewith than were those of his more culpable friends. And this was not unnatural, because he was engaged year after year in continuous warfare with Count Hatzfeldt. At length, in 1854, about the time that the unfortunate Dr. Mendelssohn died in the East, he secured for the Countess complete separation and an ample provision.

Lassalle's friendship with this lady inevitably gave rise to scandal. But never surely was scandal so little justified. She was twenty years his senior, and the relation was clearly that of mother and son. In her letters he is always "my dear child," and in his she is the confidante of the innumerable troubles of mind and of heart of which so impressionable a man as Ferdinand Lassalle had more than his share.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she tells him, when he confides to her his passion for Helene von Donniges; and the remark opens out a vista of confidences of which the world happily knows but little. From the assize court of Dusseldorf, of all places, we have a very definite glimpse of a good-looking man, likely to be a favourite in the society of the opposite sex:--

"Ferdinand Lassalle," runs the official document, "aged twenty-three,
a civilian, born at Breslau, and dwelling recently at Berlin. Stands
five feet six inches in height, has brown curly hair, open forehead,
brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and
rounded chin."

He was indeed a favourite in Berlin drawing-rooms, pronounced a "Wunderkind" by Humboldt, and enthusiastically admired on all sides. But, assuming the story of Sophie Solutzeff to be mythical, there is no evidence that Lassalle had ever had any very serious romance in his life until he met Helene von Donniges.

_Es ist eine alte Geschichte_,
_Doch bleibt sie immer neu_.--HEINE.

II. Helene von Donniges

Helene von Donniges has told us the story in fullest detail--the story of that tragic love which was to send Lassalle to his too early death. She was the daughter of a Bavarian diplomatist who had held appointments in Italy, and later in Switzerland. She was betrothed as a child of twelve to an Italian of forty years of age. At a time when, as she says, her thoughts should have been concentrated upon her studies, they were distracted by speculations on marriage and the marriage tie. A young Wallachian student named Yanko Racowitza crossed her path. His loneliness--he was far from home and friends--kindled her sympathy. Dark and ugly, she compared him to Othello, and called him her "Moor." In spite of some parental opposition she insisted upon plighting her troth to him, and the Italian lover was scornfully dismissed. Then comes the opening scene of the present story. It was in Berlin, whither Helen--we will adopt the English spelling of the name--had travelled with her grandmother in 1862, that she was asked at a ball the momentous question, "Do you know Lassalle?" She had never heard his name. Her questioner was Baron Korff, a son-in-law of Meyerbeer, who, charmed by her originality, remarked that she and Lassalle were made for one another. Two weeks later her curiosity was further excited, when Dr. Karl Oldenberg let fall some similar remark as to her intellectual kinship with the mysterious Lassalle. She asked her grandmother about him, and was told that he was a "shameless demagogue." Then she turned to her lover, who promised to inquire. Racowitza brought her information about the Countess, the casket, and other "sensations"--only to excite her curiosity the more. Finally a friend, Frau Hirsemenzel, undertook to introduce her to the notorious Socialist. The introduction took place at a party, and if her account is to be trusted, no romance could be more dramatic than the actuality. They loved one another at first sight, conversed with freedom, and he called her by an endearing name as he offered her his arm to escort her home.

"Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable," she says, "that a stranger should thus call me 'Du' on first acquaintance. We seemed to fit to one another so perfectly."

She was in her nineteenth year, Lassalle in his thirty-ninth. The pair did not see one another again for some months, not in fact until Helen visited Berlin as the guest of a certain lawyer Holthoff. Here she met Lassalle at a concert, and the friendly lawyer connived at their being more than once together. At a ball, on one occasion, Lassalle asked her what she would do if he were sentenced to death, and she beheld him ascending the scaffold.

"I should wait till your head was severed," was her answer, "in order that you might look upon your beloved to the last, and then--I should take poison."

He was pleased with her reply, but declared that there was no fear--his star was in the ascendant! And so it seemed; for although young Racowitza even then accosted him in the ballroom, the friendly Holthoff soon arranged an informal betrothal; and Lassalle was on the eve of a great public triumph which seemed more likely to take him to the throne than to the scaffold.

To many this will seem an exaggeration. Yet hear Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag seventeen years after Lassalle's death:--

He was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have
ever had intercourse, a man who was ambitious in high style, but who
was by no means Republican: he had very decided national and
monarchical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize was
the German Empire, and therein we had a point of contact. Lassalle
was extremely ambitious, and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him
whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or
the Lassalle dynasty; but he was monarchical through and through.
Lassalle was an energetic and very intellectual man, to talk with whom
was very instructive. Our conversations lasted for hours, and I was
always sorry when they came to an end. {198}

The year 1864, which was to close so tragically, opened indeed with extraordinary promise. Lassalle left Berlin in May--Helen had gone back to Geneva two or three months earlier--travelling by Leipzig and Cologne through the Rhenish provinces, and holding a "glorious review" the while.

"I have never seen anything like it," he writes to the Countess von
Hatzfeldt. "The entire population indulged in indescribable
jubilation. The impression made upon me was that such scenes must
have attended the founding of new religions."

And it appeared possible that Heine's description of Lassalle as the Messiah of the nineteenth century was to be realized. The Bishop of Mayence was on his side, and the King of Prussia sympathetic. As he passed from town to town the whole population turned out to do him honour. Countless thousands met him at the stations: the routes were ornamented with triumphal arches, the houses decorated with wreaths, and flowers were thrown upon him as he passed. As the cavalcade approached the town of Ronsdorf, for example, it was easy to see that the people were on tip-toe with expectation. At the entrance an arch bore the inscription:--

Willkommen dem Dr. Ferdinand Lassalle
Viel tausendmal im Ronsdorfer Thal!

Under arches and garlands, smothered with flowers thrown by young work- girls, whose fathers, husbands, brothers, cheered again and again, Lassalle and his friends entered the town, while a vast multitude followed in procession. It was at Ronsdorf that Lassalle made the speech which had in it something of fateful presentiment:--

"I have not grasped this banner," he said, "without knowing quite
clearly that I myself may fall. The feelings which fill me at the
thought that I may be removed cannot be better expressed than in the
words of the Roman poet:

'_Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_!'

or in German, '_Moge_, _wenn ich beseitigt werde_, _irgend ein Racher
und Nachfolger aus meinen Gebeinen auferstehen_!' May this great and
national movement of civilization not fall with my person, but may the
conflagration which I have kindled spread farther and farther, so long
as one of you still breathes. Promise me that, and in token raise
your right hands."

All hands were raised in silence, and the impressive scene closed with a storm of acclamation.

But Lassalle was worn out, and he fled for a time from the storm and conflict to Switzerland. Helen at Geneva heard of his sojourn at Righi- Kaltbad, and she made an excursion thither with two or three friends, and thus on July 25 (1864) the lovers met again. An account of their romantic interview comes to us in Helen's own diary and in the letter which Lassalle wrote to the Countess Hatzfeldt two days later. Helen tells how they climbed the Kulm together, discussing by the way the question of their marriage and the possibility of opposition.

"What have your parents against me?" asked Lassalle; and was told that only once had she mentioned his name before them, and that their horror of the Jew agitator had ever since closed her mouth. So the conversation sped. The next morning their hope of "a sunrise" was destroyed by a fog. "How often," says Helen, "when in later years I have stood upon the summit of the Righi and seen the day break in all its splendour, have I recalled this foggy, damp morning, and Lassalle's disappointment!"

As he looked upon her, so pale and trembling, he abused the climate, and promised that he would give up politics, devote himself to science and literature, and take her to Egypt or India. He talked to her of the Countess, "who will think only of my happiness," and he talked of religion. Was his Jewish faith against him in her eyes? Mahommedanism and Judaism, it was all one to her, was the answer, but paganism by preference! They parted, to correspond immediately, and Lassalle to write to the astonished, and in this affair, unsympathetic Countess, of the meeting with his beloved. With the utmost friendliness, however, he endeavoured to keep the elder lady at a distance for a time.

On July 20 Helen writes to him, repeating her promise to become his wife.

You said to me yesterday: "Say but a sensible and decided 'Yes'--_et
je me charge du reste_." Good; I say "Yes"--_chargez-vous donc du
reste_. I only require that we first do all in our power to win my
parents to a friendly attitude. To me belongs, however, a painful
task. I must slay in cold blood the true heart of Yanko von
Racowitza, who has given me the purest love, the noblest devotion.
With heartless egotism I must destroy the day-dream of a noble youth.
But for your sake I will even do what is wrong.

Meanwhile Lassalle's unhappy attempts to conciliate the Countess continue. He writes of Helen's sympathy and dwells upon her entire freedom from jealousy. He tells Frau von Hatzfeldt how much Helen is longing to see his old friend. In conclusion, as though not to show himself too blind a lover, he remarks that Helen's one failing is a total lack of will. "When, however, we are man and wife," he adds, "then shall I have 'will' enough for both, and she will be as clay in the hands of the potter." The Countess continues obdurate, and in a further letter (Aug. 2) Lassalle says:--

It is really a piece of extraordinary good fortune that, at the age of
thirty-nine and a half, I should be able to find a wife so beautiful,
so sympathetic, who loves me so much, and who--an indispensable
requirement--is so entirely absorbed in my personality.

At Lassalle's request, Helen herself wrote thus to the Baroness von Hatzfeldt:--

DEAR AND BELOVED COUNTESS,--

Armed with an introduction from my lord and master, I, his affianced
wife, come to you--unhappily only in writing--_le coeur et la main
ouverte_, and beg of you a little of that friendship which you have
given to him so abundantly. How deeply do I regret that your illness
separates us, that I cannot tell you face to face how much I love and
honour him, how ardently I long for your help and advice as to how I
can best make my beautiful and noble eagle happy. This my first
letter must necessarily seem somewhat constrained to you; for I am an
insignificant, unimportant being, who can do nothing but love and
honour him, and strive to make him happy. I would fain dance and sing
like a child, and drive away all care from him. My one desire is to
understand his great and noble nature, and in good fortune and in bad
to stand faithful and true by his side.

Then followed a further appeal for the love and help of this friend of Lassalle's early years. It was all in vain. Instead of a letter, Helen received from the Countess what she called "a scrawl," and Lassalle a long homily on his lack of judgment and foresight. Lassalle defended himself, and so the not too pleasing correspondence went on.

Yet these days in Berne were the happiest in the lives of Lassalle and his betrothed. Helen was staying with a Madame Aarson, and was constantly visited by her lover. It was agreed between them that Lassalle should follow her to Geneva, and see her parents. But no sooner had he entered his room at the Pension Leovet, in the neighbourhood of the house of Herr von Donniges, than a servant handed him a letter from Helen. It told how on her arrival she had found the whole house excited by the betrothal of her sister Margaret to Count von Keyserling. Her mother's delight in the engagement had tempted her (contrary to Lassalle's express wish) to confidences, and she had told of her love for the arch-agitator. Her mother had turned upon her with loathing, execrated Lassalle without stint, spoken scornfully of the Countess, the casket robbery, and kindred matters. "It is quite impossible," urged the frantic woman, "that Count Keyserling will unite himself to a family with a connexion of this kind." The father joined in the upbraiding, the disowning of an undutiful daughter. One has but to remember the vulgar, tradesman instinct, which then, as now, guides the marriage ideals of a certain class, to take in the whole situation at a glance.

Lassalle had hardly begun to read the letter when Helen appeared before him, and begged him to take her away immediately--to France--anywhere! Her father's violence, her mother's abuse, had driven her to despair.

Lassalle was indignant with her. Why had she not obeyed him? He would speak to her father. All would yet be well. But--she was compromised there--at his hotel. Had she a friend in the neighbourhood?

At this moment her maid came in to say that there was a carriage ready to take them to the station. A train would start for Paris in a quarter of an hour. Helen renewed her entreaty, but Lassalle remained resolute. He would only receive her from her father. To what friend could he take her? Helen named Madame Caroline Rognon, who beheld them with astonishment.

A few minutes later Frau von Donniges and her daughter Margaret entered the house. Then followed a disagreeable scene between Lassalle and the mother, ending, after many scornful words thrown at the ever self-restrained lover, in Helen being carried off before his eyes--indeed, by his wish. Lassalle had shown dignity and self-restraint, but he had killed the girl's love--until it was too late.

Duhring speaks of Lassalle's "inconceivable stupidity," and there is a great temptation at this date, with all the circumstances before us, to look at the matter with Duhring's eyes. But to one whom Heine had called a Messiah, whom Humboldt had termed a "Wunderkind," and Bismarck had greeted as among the greatest men of the age, it may well have seemed flatly inconceivable that this insignificant little Swiss diplomatist could long refuse the alliance he proposed. Yet stronger and more potent may have been the feeling--although of this there is no positive evidence extant--that the social movement which he had so much at heart could not well endure a further scandal. The Hatzfeldt story had been used against him frequently enough. An elopement--so sweetly romantic under some circumstances--would have been the ruin of his great political reputation.

Lassalle speedily regretted his course of action--what man in love would not have done so?--but his first impulse was consistent with the life of strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. To a romantic girl, however, his conduct could but seem brutal and treacherous. Helen had done more than enough. She had compromised herself irretrievably, and an immediate marriage was imperatively demanded by the conventionalities. She was, however, seized by a brutal father and confined to her room, until she understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then the entreaties of her family, the representation that her sister's marriage, even her father's position, were in jeopardy, caused her to declare that she would abandon Lassalle.

At this point the story is conflicting. Helen herself says that she never saw Lassalle again after he had handed her over to her mother, and that after a long period of ill-usage and petty persecution, she was hurried one night across the lake. Becker, however, declares that as Lassalle and his friend Rustow were walking in Geneva a carriage passed them on the way to the station containing Helen and another lady, and that Helen acknowledged their salute. Anyway, it is clear that Helen went to Bex on August 9, and that Lassalle left Geneva on the 13th. Letter after letter was sent by Lassalle to Helen--one from Karlsruhe on the 15th, and one from Munich on the 19th, but no answer. In Karlsruhe, according to von Hofstetten, Lassalle wept like a child. His correspondence with the Countess and with Colonel Rustow becomes forcible in its demands for assistance. Writing to Rustow, he tells of a two hours' conversation with the Bavarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron von Schrenk, who assures him of his sympathy, says that he cannot understand the objections of von Donniges, and that in similar circumstances he would be proud of the alliance, although he deprecated the political views of Lassalle. Finally this accommodating Minister of State--here, at least, the tragi-comedy is but too apparent--engages to send a lawyer, Dr. Haenle, as an official commissioner to negotiate with the obdurate father and refractory ambassador.

Richard Wagner, the great composer, the Bishop of Mayence, and noblemen, generals, and scholars without number were also pressed into the service, but in vain. The treachery of intimate friends more than counterbalanced all that could be achieved by well-meaning strangers. If Helen is to be believed--and the charge is not denied--Lassalle's friend Holthoff, sent to negotiate in his favour, entreated her to abandon Lassalle, and to comply with her parents' wishes. Lassalle, he declared, was not in any way a suitable husband, and her father had decided wisely. The poor girl lived in a constant atmosphere of petty persecution. Her father, she was told, might lose his post in the Bavarian service if she married this Socialist, her brother would have absolutely no career open to him, her sisters could not marry in their own rank of life; in fact, the whole family were alleged to be entirely unhappy and miserable through her stubbornness. The following letter--obviously dictated--was the not unnatural outcome:--

TO HERR LASSALLE.

SIR,--

I have again become reconciled to my betrothed bridegroom, Herr Yanko
von Racowitza, whose love I have regained, and I deeply repent my
earlier action. I have given notice of this to your legal
representative, Herr Holthoff, and I now declare to you of my own free
will and firm conviction, that there never can be any further question
of a marriage between us, and that I hold myself in all respects to be
released from such an engagement. I am now firmly resolved to devote
to my aforesaid betrothed bridegroom my eternal love and fidelity.

HELENE VON DONNIGES.

This letter came through Rustow, and Lassalle addressed the following reply to Helen, which, however, she never received--it came in fact into the possession of the Countess--a sufficient commentary on the duplicity and the false friendship not only of Holthoff, but of Colonel Rustow and the Countess Hatzfeldt in this sad affair.

MUNICH, _Aug._ 20, 1864.

HELEN,--

My heart is breaking! Rustow's letter will kill me. That you have
betrayed me seems impossible! Even now I cannot believe in such
shamelessness, in such frightful treachery. It is only for a moment
that some one has overridden your will and obliterated your true self.
It is inconceivable that this can be your real, your abiding
determination. You cannot have thrown aside all shame, all love, all
fidelity, all truth. If you did, you would dishonour and disfigure
humanity. There can be no truth left in the world if you are false,
if you are capable of descending to this depth of abandonment, of
breaking such holy oaths, of crushing my heart. Then there is nothing
more under the sun in which a man can still believe.

Have you not filled me with a longing to possess you? Have you not
implored me to exhaust all proper measures, before carrying you away
from Wabern? Have you not by your own lips and by your letters, sworn
to me the most sacred oaths? Have you not declared to me, even in
your last letters, that you were nothing, nothing but my loving wife,
and that no power on earth should stay your resolution? And now,
after you have bound this true heart of mine to yourself so strongly,
this heart which when once it gives itself away gives itself for ever;
now, when the battle has scarcely begun, do you cast me off? Do you
betray me? Do you destroy me? If so, you succeed in doing what else
no fate can do; you will have crushed and shattered one of the hardest
of men, who could withstand unflinchingly all outward storms. No, I
can never survive such treachery. It will kill me inwardly and
outwardly. It is not possible that you are so dishonourable, so
shameless, so reckless of duty, so utterly unworthy and infamous. If
you were, you would deserve of me the most deadly hatred. You would
deserve the contempt of the world. Helen, it is not your own
resolution which you have communicated to Rustow. Some one has
fastened it upon you by a coercion of your better feelings. Listen to
me. If you abide by this resolution, you will lament it as long as
you live.

Helen, true to my words, "_Je me charge du reste_," I shall stay here,
and shall take all possible steps to break down your father's
opposition. I have already excellent means in my hand, which will
certainly not remain unused, and if they do not succeed, I shall still
possess thousands of other means, and I will grind all hindrances to
dust if you will but remain true to me. If you remain true, there is
no limit to my strength or to my love of you, _Je me charge toujours
du reste_! The battle is hardly begun, you cowardly girl. But can it
be, that while I sit here, and have already achieved what seemed
impossible, you are betraying me, and listening to the flattering
words of another man? Helen, my fate is in your hands! But if you
destroy me by this wicked treachery, from which I cannot recover, then
may evil fall upon you, and my curse follow you to the grave! This is
the curse of a true heart, of a heart that you wantonly break, and
with which you have cruelly trifled. Yes, this curse of mine will
surely strike you.

According to Rustow's message, you want your letters to be returned to
you. In any case, you will never receive them otherwise than from
me--after a personal interview. For I must and will speak to you
personally, and to you alone. I must and will hear my death-doom from
your own lips. It is only thus that I can believe what otherwise
seems impossible to me.

I am continuing here to take further steps to win you, and when I have
done all that is possible, I shall come to Geneva. Helen, our
destinies are entwined!

F. LASSALLE. {213}

It is pitiable to realize the amount of false or imperfect friendship which led Lassalle on to his ruin. Rustow was false, and Holthoff was false, if it were not rather that both looked upon Lassalle's affection for this girl, half his age, as a mad freak to be cured and forgotten. More might have been expected from the Countess, to whom Lassalle had given so much pure and disinterested devotion; but here again, a sense of maternal ownership in Lassalle was sufficient to justify, in such a woman, any means to keep him apart from this fancy of the hour. To the Countess, however, Helen had turned for help, and had received a note which had but enraged her, and made the breach between her and Lassalle yet wider. In the after years, Helen published one letter and the Countess another as the actual reply of the Countess to Helen's appeal, and the truth will now never be known. Meanwhile Dr. Arndt, a nephew of von Donniges, had gone to Berlin to fetch Yanko von Racowitza. Of Yanko Helen has herself given us a pleasant picture, as the one man for whom she really cared until the overwhelming presence of Lassalle appeared upon the scene, as her one friend during her persecution. Absent from Lassalle's influence, it was not strange that the delicate Wallachian--even younger than herself and the slave of her every whim--should have an influence in her life. Had Lassalle, however, had yet another personal interview with her, there can scarcely be a doubt that she would have been as he had once said, "as clay in the hands of the potter"--but this was not to be. Lassalle came back to Geneva on August 23, and immediately wrote an earnest letter to Herr von Donniges, begging for an interview, and stating that he had not the least enmity towards him for what had happened. With the fear of the Foreign Minister at Munich before his eyes Helen's father could not well refuse again, and the interview took place. Lassalle, according to von Donniges, demanded that Yanko von Racowitza should be forbidden the house, while he himself should have ready access to Helen. He further charged von Donniges with cruelty to his daughter, and was called a liar to his face, while even the cook was called upon the scene to give her evidence as to the domestic ethics of this family circle. The letter of von Donniges to Dr. Haenle was clearly meant to be shown to the Foreign Minister, and the wily diplomatist naturally took the opportunity both to justify himself and to vilify Lassalle. Then began a painful dispute as to whether Herr von Donniges had ill-used his daughter; the overwhelming evidence, which includes the testimony of that daughter, written long after her father's death, tending to prove the truth of Lassalle's allegation. Lassalle meanwhile found no opportunity of approaching Helen, and having every reason to believe that she was entirely faithless, gave up the struggle. He referred to the girl in language characteristic of a despairing and jilted lover, and sent von Donniges a challenge, although many years before, in a political controversy, he had declined to fight--on principle. His seconds were to be General Becker and Colonel Rustow, and the latter has left us a long account of the affair.

On the appointed day, August 22, Rustow went everywhere to look for Herr von Donniges, but the minister had fled to Berne. Rustow then saw Lassalle at the rooms of the Countess von Hatzfeldt. Lassalle mentioned that he had that morning had his challenge accepted by von Racowitza, whose seconds were Count Keyserling and Dr. Arndt. Rustow insisted, both to Lassalle and to Racowitza's friends, that von Donniges should have priority, but was overruled; and it was agreed that the duel should be fought that very evening. Rustow protested that he could not find another second in so short a time--General Becker does not seem to have been available--but at length it was arranged that General Bethlem should be asked to fill the office, and that the duel should take place on the following morning, August 28. There seems to have been considerable difficulty in finding suitable pistols, and at the last moment General Bethlem declined to be a second, and Herr von Hofstetten consented to act. Rustow called upon Lassalle at the Victoria Hotel at five o'clock. At half-past six the party started for Carouge, a village in the neighbourhood of Geneva, which they reached an hour later. Lassalle was quite cheerful, and perfectly confident that he would come unharmed out of the conflict. The opponents faced one another and Racowitza wounded Lassalle, who was carried by Rustow and Dr. Seiler to a coach, and thence to the Victoria Hotel, Geneva. He suffered dreadfully both then and afterwards, and was only relieved by a plentiful use of opium. Three days later, on Wednesday, August 31, 1864, he died.

Was it the chance shot of a delicate boy that killed one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century, or was it a planned attack upon one who loved the people? This last view was taken and is still taken by many of his followers; but it is needless to say that it has no foundation in fact. Lassalle was killed by a chance shot, and killed in a duel which had not even the doubtful justification of hatred of his opponent. "Count me no longer as a rival; for you I have nothing but friendship," were the words written to Racowitza at the moment that he challenged von Donniges, and he declared on his death-bed that he died by his own hand.

The revolutionists of all lands assembled around his dead body, which was embalmed by order of the Countess. This woman talked loudly of vengeance, called not only von Racowitza but Helen a murderer, {218} little thinking that posterity would judge her more hardly than Helen. She proposed to take the corpse in solemn procession through Germany; but an order from the Prussian Government disturbed her plans, and at Breslau, Lassalle's native town, it was allowed to rest. Lassalle is buried in the family vault in the Jewish Cemetery, and a simple monument bears the inscription:

HERE RESTS WHAT IS MORTAL
OF
FERDINAND LASSALLE,
THE
THINKER AND THE FIGHTER.

To understand the whole tragedy and to justify its great victim is to feel something of the strain which comes to every thinker and fighter who, like Lassalle, writes and speaks persistently to vast audiences, often against great odds, and always with the prospect of a prison before him. That his nerves were utterly unstrung, that he was not his real self in those last days, is but too evident. Armed, as he claimed, with the entire culture of his century, a maker of history if ever there was one, he became the victim of a love drama which I suppose that Mr. Matthew Arnold would describe as of the surgeon's apprentice order: but which, apart from his political creed, will always endear him to men and women who have "lived and loved."

And what shall we say of Helen von Donniges? Her own story is surely one of the most romantic ever written. In _My Relation to Ferdinand Lassalle_, she tells how Yanko broke to her the news that he was going to fight Lassalle, and how much she grieved. "Lassalle will inevitably kill Yanko," she thought; and she pitied him, but her pity was not without calculation. "When Yanko is dead and they bring his body here, there will be a stir in the house," she said, "and I can then fly to Lassalle." But the hours flew by, and finally Yanko came to tell her that he had wounded his opponent. For the moment, and indeed until after Lassalle's death, she hated her successful lover; but a little later his undoubted goodness, his tenderness and patience, won her heart. They were married, but he died within a year, of consumption. Being disowned by her relations, Helen then settled in Berlin, and studied for the stage. She herself relates how at Breslau on one occasion, when acting a boy's part in one of Moser's comedies, some of Lassalle's oldest friends being present remarked upon her likeness to Lassalle in his youth, a resemblance on which she and Lassalle had more than once prided themselves. At a later date Frau von Racowitza married a Russian Socialist, S. E. Shevitch, then resident in America. M. Shevitch returned to Russia a few years after this and lived with his wife at Riga. Those who have seen Madame Shevitch describe her as one of the most fascinating women they have ever met. She and her husband were very happy in their married life. Madame Shevitch is now living in Munich. Our great novelist and poet George Meredith has immortalized her in his _Tragic Comedians_.