Chapter I

In the spring of the year 1870, when my merry Paquette and I used to laugh at the cartoons of the _Kladderadatch_, representing King William lowering a mannikin in regimentals gently, by the spike of his helmet, into a huge chair, inscribed "Spanien," we little foresaw the horrors that were to come, or the days when we might tremble at the warlike news of the official _Staatsanzieger_.

We had been married a year, and were so happy in our pretty little house at Blankenese (a short distance from Hamburg), where all the sloping bank above the Elbe is covered with rich green copsewood, from amid which peep out the tiny red-tiled cottages of the fishermen; while over all tower the white-walled villas of those opulent merchants whose names stood so high in the Neuerwall or the Admiralitatstrasse, and higher still in the Bourse of the Free City--free now only in name, as it has become, since the Holstein war, an integral portion of the Prussian Empire.

Paquette Champfleurie was my first real love; yet, though still little more than a girl, she was a widow when we married, and it all came to pass in this fashion, for we had indeed much sorrow before our days of joy arrived. When I, Carl Steinmetz--for such is my name, though no relation to the great Prussian general--was but a lad in a merchant's office, in the quaint old gable-ended and timber-built street called the Stubbenhuk, I had learned to love Paquette, then a boarder in a fashionable school on the beautiful Alsterdam. Our interviews were stolen; our intercourse most difficult; for her kinswoman, the Gräfine von Spitzberger--a reduced lady of rank, with whom she was placed for educational purposes--watched her with the eyes of a lynx. But what will not love achieve?

Paquette, a lively, dark-eyed, and chestnut-haired girl from Lorraine, with a piquant little face that was not by any means French in contour or expression, and I, a sharp-witted _burschen_ fresh from Berlin, soon found means for prosecuting our affair of the heart, from the time when our eyes first met on a Sunday evening in St. Michael's Kirche, to that eventful hour when, after many a note exchanged or concealed in a certain hollow tree near the Lombardsbrücke, we plighted our troth in the little grove near Schiller's bronze statue, with no witnesses but the quiet stars overhead, and the snow-white swans that floated on the blue current of the Alster.

But sorrow soon came to rouse us from our dreams; for three weeks after that happy evening her father took her home, without permitting us to say farewell, and ere long I learned that she had become the wife of Baptiste Graindorge, a wealthy merchant of Lorraine! With these tidings the half of my life seemed to leave me. They cost me many a secret tear, and much jealous bitterness, though I knew that French girls have no freedom of choice in matrimony; and I loathed the odious Graindorge in my heart, while bending resolutely over my desk, in the dingy and gloomy little office in the noisy Stubbenhuk--bending also every energy to amass money, though for what purpose now I scarcely know. But fortune favoured me.

I became ere long a junior partner in the firm under whom I had worked as a clerk, and the same year saw Paquette free; for our horrible Graindorge had died abroad of fever, at the French colony of Senegal, and she became mine--mine after all! A widow, no scheming father could interfere with her then.

In the whole of busy Hamburg there could be no happier couple than we were--and this was but a year ago. Wedded, we visited every place where we had been wont to meet by stealth, in terror of the old Gräfine--the leafy arcades of the Young Maiden's Walk, the Botanical Gardens, the groves that cover all the old mounds about the Holstein Wall, and the banks of the Alster, while Michael's Kirche was indeed a holy place to us, for there we had first met.

One morning in July of last year--ah, I shall never forget it--we were at breakfast together in the dining-room of our cottage at Blankenese, and prior to taking the Sporvei 'bus for the city, I was skimming over the _Staatsanzieger_, which was then beginning to be full of threatening news concerning the Spanish succession, and calling on Prussia to rouse herself, as all France, or Paris, at least, was shouting "A Berlin!" and "To the Rhine!" The atmosphere was deliciously warm; the slender iron casements were wide open; the fragrant roses and jessamine clambered thickly round them, and the drowsy hum of the bees mingled with the sounds that came, softened by distance, from the vast shining bosom of the Elbe, where ships, with the flags of all the world, were gliding, some towards Jonashafen and the city, others downward to the North Sea; and opposite lay the flat but green and lovely coast of Hanover, studded with pretty red villages, church-spires, and windmills whirling in the sunny air.

My heart felt happy and joyous, and Paquette was looking her loveliest in a light muslin morning dress; her bright brown hair, her pure complexion, and her dark, laughing eyes, making her seem a very Hebe, as she poured out my coffee, buttered the little brown German rolls, and chirruped about how we should spend the evening, after she had joined me in the city, and we had dined, as we frequently did, under the shady verandah of the pleasant Alster Pavilion, surrounded by swans and pleasure boats.

"Where shall we go, Carl, darling?" she continued--"to the Circus Renz?"

"No, Paquette; I am sick of the horsemanship and the sawdust, and the same everlasting girl, who, when she is not flying through a hoop, prances about in the dress of a Uhlan."

"The Botanical Gardens, then; the band of the 76th Hanoverians play there to-night, and some ten thousand gay people will be present."

"Well, darling, it shall be as you wish; and after looking in at the Stadt Theatre, to see Kathie Lanner's Swedish ballet, a droski will soon whirl us home from the Damthor-wall."

"But it was in that theatre, Carl, love, we saw each other last, and at a distance, on the night----"

"Before--before----" I began.

"I was torn from you to become the wife of another, Carl," she exclaimed, in a low voice, as she took my face between her pretty hands, and kissed me playfully.

"Ah, Graindorge!" thought I, with a little bitterness, as I kissed her in return, and rose to fill my meerschaum prior to setting forth for the city; but a strange cry from Paquette made me wheel sharply round on the varnished floor, and to my bewilderment and terror, I saw her sinking back in her chair, pallid as death, like one transfixed--her jaw relaxed, her poor little hands clasped, her eyes expressive only of horror and woe, and bent on something outside the window. My gaze involuntarily followed hers, as I sprung to her side.

At the railing before our little flower-garden stood a shabby-looking man, whose face will ever haunt me. His hat, well worn, tall and shiny, was pressed knowingly over the right eye. He was looking steadily at us, and appeared as if he had been doing so for some time. A diabolical grin, like that of Mephistopheles, was over all his features--in his carbuncle-like eyes, and in his wide mouth, where all his teeth seemed to glisten. He had a sallow and dissipated face, a hooked, sardonic nose, and on his left cheek a large black mole. A faded green dress-coat, with brass buttons, a yellow vest, and short inexpressibles of checked stuff, formed his attire.

My wife was almost fainting, and seemed on the verge of distraction.

"Paquette, my love," I began; but she held up her trembling hands as if deprecatingly between us, and said in a low, broken, and wailing voice--

"Do not speak to me--do not touch me. I am not your wife! Oh, my poor deluded Carl!--oh, my poor heart! Oh, death, come and end this horror--this mystery!"

Her words, her voice, her whole air and expression, made my blood run cold with a sudden terror, that her reason had become affected.

"Paquette--dearest Paquette," I said, in a soothing and an imploring manner, "what do these terrible words mean? That man----"

"Is Monsieur Baptiste Graindorge, my first husband, come back from the grave to torment me!"

"Impossible--girl, you rave!" said I, in deep distress, as I vaulted over the window and rushed out upon the road; but the scurvy eavesdropper was gone, and no trace of him remained. In great grief, and feeling sorely disturbed by the whole affair, I returned to Paquette, whom I found crouching on the sofa, crushed by agitation and despair. She gazed at me lovingly, sorrowfully, and yet as if fearful that I might approach and touch her.

"Is there not some terrible mistake or misconception in this?" said I, seeking to gather courage from my own words.

"None--none," she replied. "I recognized too surely his face--the mole--the odious smile."

"But the man died in Africa--it is impossible; and you are my wife, Paquette, whom none can take from me," I continued, with excited utterance, as she permitted me to kiss her: but the poor little pet was cold as marble, and her tremulous hands played almost fatuously, yet caressingly, with my hair, while she murmured--

"Oh, Carl--my poor Carl--what _will_ become of us now?"

The whole affair seemed too improbable for realization. I besought her to take courage--to consider the likeness which had startled her as a mere fancy--an optical delusion; and, aware that my presence was imperatively necessary at business in the city, I was compelled to leave her, and did so not without a sorrowful foreboding.

So strong was the latter emotion, that the closing of the house-door rang like a knell in my heart. I paused irresolute at the garden gate, and again on the road; but the jingling bells of the approaching Sporvei 'bus ended my doubts. I sprang in, and in due time found myself at my office in the busy Admiralitatstrasse, opposite the Rath Haus.

Haunted by the strange episode of the morning, I strove vainly to become absorbed in bills of lading, and so forth, till one o'clock should toll from the spires--the time for plunging into the crowd of noisy speculators at the Bourse--and I was just about to set forth, when a stranger was announced; I looked up, and was face to face with the horrible Graindorge! He stood before me just as I had seen him at the garden-rail, with his tall shiny hat, his shabby coat, his bloated visage with its black mole and malignant smile.

"Your business?" I asked curtly.

"Will be briefly stated, Herr Steinmetz," said he. "So madame fully recognized me this morning?"

"Or thought she did," said I, after a short interval of silence.

"There was no doubt in the matter, but firm conviction. I did _not_ die in Senegal, the report was false; and so, Herr Steinmetz, I am here to claim my wife and take her back with me to Lorraine."

"You are a foul impostor!" cried I furiously, yet with a sinking heart; "and I shall hand you over to the watch."

"Pardon me, but you will do nothing of the kind," replied the other, with the most exasperating composure; "it will not be pleasant to have your wife--your _supposed_ wife, I mean--made a source of speculation to all Hamburg, by any public exposé."

"Oh, my God! my poor Paquette!" I exclaimed involuntarily; "and I love her so!"

"Milles diables!" grinned the Frenchman; "it is more than I do."

"Wretch! what proof have we that you are Baptiste Graindorge, and not a cheat--a trickster?"

"The effect produced by my presence--my appearance--on madame, who dare not deny my identity, which the Gräfine Spitzberger has already admitted--with great reluctance, I grant you. Well, I am supposed to be dead. I shall be content to let this supposition remain, and to quit Hamburg for a consideration."

"Name it," I asked, thankful for the prospect of being rid of his horrid presence even for a time, that I might consult some legal friend; and yet, even while I spoke and thought of purchasing his silence, I knew that Paquette, my adored wife, would be no wife of mine! It was a horrible dilemma. Graindorge the Lorrainer was rich; now he seemed to be poor and needy. I knew not what to think; grief was uppermost in my soul. After a pause he said slowly--

"For six thousand Prussian dollars I shall quit Hamburg."

With a trembling hand, yet without hesitation, I wrote him a cheque on my banker, Herr Berger in the Gras-keller, for the sum named, and the snaky eyes of the Frenchman flashed as he clutched the document. He inserted it in his tattered pocket-book, and carefully buttoned his shabby green coat over it; then he placed his hat jauntily on one side of his head, and tapping the crown with his hand, made me a low ironical bow, and with a pirouette and a malicious smile quitted the room, saying--

"Adieu, Monsieur Steinmetz--I go; but for _a time_ only."