Chapter VII (2)

"And the two went off laughing; Leonora's silk dress struck me as she passed.

"My companion came back and put his hand on my shoulder.

"'I have learnt everything,' he said.

"'So have I,' I replied, raising my head.

"'How?'

"'She has told me all herself.'

"My friend thought I was delirious. 'Come,' he said, 'the heat has been too much for you.'

"You may imagine that I did not sleep much that night. I formed a thousand plans and rejected them again. Only one thing was certain: I must save Leonora from this hell. I did not doubt what was my duty for a moment.

"And yet I rose next morning without having formed a resolution. I was not afraid for myself, for my heart could not be torn more fearfully than it had been torn the night before. I was afraid only for Leonora, that a sudden meeting might humiliate her too fearfully, might kill her perhaps. A few days passed, and I found no better plan after all than to go straight to her. My friend shook his head whenever I spoke of my project. 'But, _mon cher_,' he said again and again, 'don't you see that you still love her?' Was he right? I do not know. At all events, this kind of love was very different from ordinary love, for it knew nothing of humiliated pride, of mortified vanity--nay, nothing even of the fear of possibly becoming ridiculous, by attempting to save a woman who did not at all desire to be saved.

"When I had at last decided in my own heart, I went one forenoon to the house on the Boulevard. The porter smiled as he gave his customary reply: '_Qui, monsieur, au troisème!_' to my question if Mademoiselle Eléonore was living there. But he added: 'Mademoiselle will hardly be at home for anybody; she only came home towards daybreak.'

"I ascended the staircase covered with costly carpets; in the third story I read on a china plate near a bell-rope: '_Mademoiselle Eléonore de Saint Georges._' How many names had the poor girl had, since she had laid aside the honest name of her father?

"I rang the bell. An ugly woman, half waiting-maid, half companion, and looking all the uglier because of the neatness of her dress and the affected respectability of her manner, opened and asked me what I wanted, I wished to see Mademoiselle Eléonore.

"'Mademoiselle is indisposed and cannot see anybody to-day.'

"'But I must see her.'

"'Impossible,' said the woman, 'I have just sent for a doctor.'

"'But, madame, I am the doctor.'

"'_Ah, c'est autre chose, entrez, monsieur le docteur._'

"She led me through a small entry into a lofty, stately apartment, furnished with almost princely splendor, and asked me to wait there a few minutes, until her mistress should be able to see me.

"'Has mademoiselle got up yet?'

"'Yes; I shall be back in a moment.'

"She disappeared behind a thick curtain.

"I remained standing in the centre of the room, and looked upon all the splendor by which I was surrounded--the luscious paintings by Watteau and Boucher in their broad, gilt frames; the Chinese pagodas upon the marble mantelpiece; the vases and cups of finest porcelain, the luxurious divans and sofas--and I felt like the physician who is looking upon the lace cuff of a hand which he is called in to amputate. Had I not come here as a physician? Was I not here now under the pretext of being a physician?

"The maid returned, and begged me to follow her. She drew back the curtain to let me pass. I entered a half-dark room, covered like all the others with thick, soft carpets, and hung with deep red-silk hangings, the chamber of the mistress of the house, and then through another curtain into a second room, light and bright. Of the furniture of this room I saw nothing; I saw only the slender, white form which rose when I entered from the divan on which she had been resting, and now advanced a few steps to meet me. And this slender, white form, with the pale, worn-out, beautiful face, in which the large dark eyes shone with almost ghastly brightness--this beautiful being, broken in body and soul, lost for eternity, was my Leonora, whom I had worshipped, and who had once been blooming like a rose in innocence and youth!

"'I have sent for you, doctor,' she said in a low voice.

"Then she raised her eyes and looked at me. Her lips grew silent; she stared at me with eyes which seemed to leap forth from their orbits; then she uttered a piercing cry and fell down, before I or her maid could seize her in our arms.

"We carried her back to the divan. She was deadly pale and cold; I thought for a moment the sudden blow might have snapped the frail thread on which her life was hanging. I should have hailed her death as a rescue from hell, as a mercy from heaven. But soon I became convinced that life was not going to let her loose for some time yet. I knew enough of medicine to remember what was to be done in such an emergency. While I was busy with the fainting girl, I asked the maid if Leonora was at all subject to such attacks; what was the general state of her health? The woman thought it her duty to drop her assumed respectability before a physician. 'She had been only about six months in the service of mademoiselle. Since then matters had gone down hill very fast indeed. But mademoiselle was really living too fast in all conscience. Dancing every night till three or four o'clock in the morning, drinking champagne without stopping--no one could stand that long, least of all a lady of such delicate structure. She was begging mademoiselle every day to abandon such a life, but she received always the same answer: the sooner it is over the better. And over it will be very soon,' cried the woman; 'and I shall lose my poor dear mistress, whom I love like my own child, although she does not lead a life such as she ought to lead.'

"The invalid began to recover. I sent the maid away, ordering her to buy some salts at the druggist's; for I did not want to have any witness present when Leonora should fully awake. The old hypocrite had hardly left the room when Leonora once more opened her eyes and looked at me with a confused, incredulous glance. I noticed that in proportion as her mind returned her horror at my presence increased anew, and threatened to make her faint a second time. This painful shrinking from one whom she used to meet with open arms was harder to bear than all the rest, and nearly moved me to tears. I felt not a trace of hatred, of anger, in my heart, not even of contempt--no, nothing but pity, boundless, unspeakable pity. I do not know what I said--but I must have spoken good, mild words of love and of forgiveness, for her rigid features began gradually to become softer; her eyes, dilated with horror, filled with tears, and at last she broke out into passionate weeping, hiding her head on my bosom as I was kneeling by her side. It was a terrible weeping; it was as if all the tears of the last years, which she had concealed under laughter and jests, were breaking forth from their deep, deep cells and would never cease to flow; and between a sobbing as if her heart were breaking, a crying as if her innermost soul were pierced by two-edged swords. I have never in all my life, either before or afterwards, witnessed anything like this fearful breaking forth of repentance in a soul stained with sin, but noble by nature.

"We seemed to have exchanged the parts allotted to us. It looked as if she had been offended, and I was the criminal. I exhausted myself in prayers, in implorations, to pour soothing oil into her wounds, to calm the terrible grief that was raging with such violence. Gradually I succeeded in calming her after a fashion. She wept, quietly resting her head on one hand, while I spoke to her holding the other hand--how white and slender and transparent her fingers had become!--spoke to her as a brother would speak to his sister in such a case. I begged her to look upon me as a brother, to confide in me as her best, perhaps her only friend. I conjured her by all that was sacred to her, by the memory of her youth, by the memory of her parents--who were both now resting under the green turf--to tear herself away from this whirlpool which must swallow her up sooner or later, and to follow me. I promised to take her, if she wished it, into a desert--to the very ends of the world--only away, away from this gilded wretchedness.

"'It is too late; too late!' she murmured. 'You are kind, I know; inexpressibly kind; but it is too late, too late!'

"I do not know how long this struggle might have lasted if a strange episode had not occurred, which decided it to my great astonishment quickly in my favor.

"While I was yet kneeling at Leonora's side, I suddenly heard somebody say behind me: '_Mais vraiment, c'est superbe!_' I rose, full of horror. Before me stood a young man elegantly dressed, who examined me through his eye-glass from head to foot and back again, and then repeated: '_Superbe! mademoiselle_, I congratulate you on this new conquest.'

"The young man was one of Leonora's friends, whose lavish liberality had procured for him the privilege of being looked upon by her as her only lover. He knew that Leonora was by no means rigorously faithful to him, and did not mind it much; but he did not like to meet his rivals at her house, which he had furnished at his own expense, and with princely magnificence.

"'I beg you will explain this scene, mademoiselle, he said, turning to Leonora, in a tone of insulting indifference, which drove all the blood from my cheeks to the heart.

"I was opening my lips to give him an insulting answer, when Leonora anticipated me. As soon as she had seen the new comer she had risen, and stood now, pushing me gently back, between him and myself.

"'This gentleman,' she said, pointing at me, 'has a right to be here.'

"'What right?'

"'The right of one who has been unfortunate enough to love me once.'

"'Ah, mademoiselle,' replied the young man, smiling ironically, 'the gentleman shares that misfortune with many others.'

"'Sir,' said I, 'whatever claims you may have upon mademoiselle, I have older claims, and I cannot allow you to insult a lady to whom I was once engaged in my presence.'

"'Ah,' said the young man; 'you were engaged to mademoiselle. It is not possible! and now, I dare say, you propose to marry her, after I'--with a glance at the furniture--'have had the folly to provide mademoiselle with a trousseau. Very well conceived, upon my word!'

"'Stop, sir!' cried Leonora, rising to her full height, 'enough has been said. You think you can control me, and insult me, because I have accepted your presents. Here, I return you all you have ever given me. There, and there, and there!' and she tore with feverish excitement the gold bracelets and all the jewels she wore from her and threw them at the feet of the young man.

"The passion with which she did this was too deep to be for a moment misinterpreted, and evidently made a great impression upon the dandy. 'I have had enough of this.' he said. 'I shall see you again, mademoiselle, here is my card, sir!' and he hastened to leave the room.

"'Come! come!' cried Leonora; 'not another moment will I stay here. Rather at the bottom of the Seine than here!'

"'I took her at her word. I begged her to change her dress while I wrote in her name a few lines to the Marquis de Saintonges--this was the name of Leonora's lover--and placed the lodging, which he had rented for Leonora, and everything he had ever given her, once more at his disposal. We left the house, handed the keys to the porter, and gave the letter into the hands of a messenger, who promised to deliver it immediately, and a few hours afterwards I had settled all my affairs, said farewell to my friends, and the city was several miles behind us.

"Our journey was for the present not to be a very long one. A few stations beyond Paris, Leonora became so unwell, we had to stop in a little town. The physician who was called in was fortunately an able man, and told me that mademoiselle, my sister (for such Leonora appeared to be), was threatened with inflammation of the brain. His diagnosis was unfortunately but too correct. The very next day the terrible disease showed itself clearly. The poor sufferer raved in her delirium of the hot orgies in the _Jardin aux Lilas_ and of the cool shades in her native woods, of the Marquis de Saintonges, and other Paris acquaintances, and of myself, now appearing as her guardian angel, and now as an avenging demon, while I sat by her bedside and meditated on our strange position. During my eager pursuit of Leonora I had followed rather a blind impulse than very clear motives, and never, in all my dreams, had it occurred to me that we might be placed in a situation like that in which I now found myself. But amid all my troubles one thought rose high above all doubt: I must never again quit Leonora, if she should recover.

"After a little while symptoms appeared which gave us hope, and one fine morning the physician brought me the news that a crisis had taken place in the disease, and that Leonora was for the present out of danger. 'Nevertheless,' he added, with a very serious expression, 'I must not conceal it from you that, according to human calculations, your sister is not destined to survive this attack very long. I apprehend that her lungs are seriously affected; she must have been ill a long time before I saw her. I do not know your circumstances, and cannot tell, therefore, whether you will be able to follow my advice. My advice is this: Go with your sister to a southern climate--to Italy; if you can, to Egypt. In a less genial climate mademoiselle would succumb in a very short time.'

"My resolution was instantly formed. I had nothing more to win and nothing to lose in Germany, where my political cure was to be completed by a prohibition to teach publicly during the next five years. My means had been nearly consumed during my long wanderings; there was only a small remnant left, but I might spend that sum just as well in Italy as elsewhere; besides, I hoped to derive abroad some advantages from my knowledge of languages; and, finally, I had no choice. I would have rather endured extreme suffering than to omit doing anything that could benefit Leonora. A few days later we were on our way to Italy.

"I settled down a few miles from Genoa, upon the coast of the glorious Mediterranean. I was fortunate enough to obtain a few lessons in the family of a rich Englishman, who had come to the place for the same reasons which brought me there, and thus I was relieved of all anxiety on the score of money. All the greater was my anxiety for Leonora.

"Our flight from Paris had been so sudden, and was for Leonora so entirely the result of a momentary impulse--her sickness, following immediately afterwards, had so completely broken down all her energies that she had willingly acceded to all my arrangements, and was only now coming to a clear understanding of our situation--I had not thought of it at first, and became aware of it only now through Leonora's manner towards me--that in this dependence on a man whom she had shamefully betrayed, and in the constant company of him before whom she would have loved to hide herself in the lowest depth, she suffered probably the severest punishment that could have been inflicted upon a person in whom the last spark of honor and self-respect was not extinguished. Leonora did not hesitate to say so; but she added, 'the punishment is severe but just; it was the only way, perhaps, to teach me how grievously I had sinned against you.' While Leonora found thus a soothing comfort for her conscience in her deep repentance, I had in my unspeakable sorrow only one very modest consolation: to act towards Leonora as my conscience dictated. I was at liberty to drain the cup of sorrow to the very last drop. That was the fulfilment of all the precious happiness of which I had dreamt so much in the golden days of Fichtenau, and even later in the dark nights of my imprisonment in the fortress! This pale, feeble form--that walked slowly along the sea-coast in the evening sunlight, hanging on my arm and never lifting up the weary head--she by whose sick-bed I sat watching day after day, when sickness confined her in her room, and in whose broken heart it had become my duty to pour soothing balm, of which I stood so much in need myself--this was the girl whom I had chosen to be my wife, and in whom I had worshipped, full of bright hopes, the mother of my children. Oh, Oswald! Oswald! the most fanatical optimist might have been appalled--the most orthodox soul might have been led to doubt if there were not after all a great deal of truth in Voltaire's assertion, that life was nothing but a _mauvaise plaisanterie_.

"And yet it was good for me to pass through this trial also. It was a bitter medicine; but it cured me thoroughly of that disease which others call joy of existence and pleasure in life.

"Leonora's humility in bearing her sufferings put me altogether to shame. In proportion as the disease was destroying her bodily form, the original beauty of her soul began to reappear. She had led a sinful life; when she died, she died like a saint.

"It was late in the evening. I had carried the poor sufferer, who was specially excited on that day, and anxiously yearned after air and light, in my own arms from the fisherman's cottage which we occupied, to the edge of the black basaltic rocks which here hang over the sea. She was resting on a couch formed of cushions. The sun was setting in resplendent magnificence, and just sinking into the sea. Not a breath stirred the smooth surface of the waters, and the emerald and golden lights which shone in the sky were purely and calmly reflected below, as in a mirror. Upon the pale face of the patient also fell an enchanting sheen--a rosy lie--the lie with which the sun and life scoff at the night and at death. And in that hour Leonora took leave of the sun and of life. She told me that she had always loved me, even at that moment when vanity and folly had blinded her; that her whole life since that day had been but a continuous effort to drown her remorse. She did not desire to live, even if it were possible that I should ever love her again. She felt herself to be unworthy of being my slave, much more so of being my wife. She was shuddering at the mere thought. 'Oh never, never more,' she continued, and her beautiful eyes shone with a supernatural fire, 'never upon this earth, where I have so tearfully sinned against you. But when this desecrated body has crumbled into dust, and the soul has been freed from the fetters that bound it to the dust, then I will hover around you, I will wait for you; and when you come, your soul will kiss my soul, and by that kiss I shall know that all has been atoned for, that all is forgotten and forgiven.'

"I told her that I had long since forgiven her fully, and that I now loved her with a purer and holier love than in the days of our happiness.

"I kissed, weeping, her white hands and her pale lips.

"'This is our wedding-day,' she whispered--'poor, poor man.' She sank back upon the cushions.

"I carried her, quite exhausted, back to the cottage and to her bed.

"It was the last time.

"That night Leonora died."

Berger had risen, and Oswald had followed his example. The former was entirely filled with the recollections which had just passed before his mind's eye, clothed by his powerful imagination with all the accuracy and clearness of reality; the latter thought of nothing but what he had just heard; and thus both hardly noticed the road which led them gradually higher and higher through the dark pine forests.

Thus they found themselves suddenly upon the bare top of the mountain, which the people of the neighborhood call the Lookout, and which is by far the highest all around among all the brothers and sisters.

The sun had set, but the western sky was still glowing in all the splendor of the evening glory, and a faint reflex gave even to the eastern horizon a faint, rosy tinge. Here and there one of the higher mountain-tops, steeped in purple, looked after the parting light of the day; but the larger valleys were already filled with gray shadows of the evening, and whitish mists floated in the narrower glens. The pine-trees, whose heads rose from below to a level with the travellers' feet, stood calm and rigid, like a breathless multitude in anxious expectation.

Berger gazed into the glow of the setting sun, resting on his stick, and watching it as every instant some tinge vanished and another turned pale. Oswald's eye hung upon his features, which seemed every moment to become more and more spiritual. Was it the effect of the ghastly light, or merely the expression of what was going on within? Suddenly Berger dropped his cane, spread out his hands as if in prayer, and said: "Mother Night, all-powerful original Night, from whose bosom the creature tears itself away in mad desire to live, only in order to return after long wanderings, penitent and humiliated, to your faithful maternal heart, I hail you, even in this faint, earthly image! Yon bottomless bourn of oblivion, yon sweet cradle of unbroken rest, how I long for you with my whole heart! Oh, take it from me, this intolerable burden of life; spare me the daily returning grief to open these weary eyes to a light which they hate; take from me this remnant of dust, which weighs me down with its sinfulness, and which becomes only the more painful as it daily dwindles away! Let it, oh, let it quickly be consumed! I know I could quickly come to you if I but took a single step beyond the edge of this rock; but even if my bones were broken into atoms below, my soul would find no rest, for it has still a few drops left in the cup of life; perhaps--who can tell?--the very bitterest of them all. No! no! get thee away from me, Satan, who allurest me down into the abyss! The abyss is not death; life in all its splendor, is true death. I know thy old tricks; thou didst try them with the carpenter's son of Nazareth! But he rebuked thee and thy temptations--honor, power, and the favor of women--all he rejected, in order to hunger, to thirst, and not to have where he might lay his head, to wash off the last remnant of earthly life in the bloody sweat of the night on the Mount of Olives, and in order to die the death of a murderer on the cross at Golgotha! Oh that I could go forth into all the world, to preach the word, the sacred word, that frees us now and forever--the word that leads us back again to our good, mild, dear Mother Night, whom we have left in order to suffer infernal punishment in the bright sun-glow of life, while our tongue is parched and our temples are beating! The word, the holy, mysterious word, which has become a mere mummery, a derision, and a mockery, in the vain show with which they fancy they serve their God. Forgive them, oh Mother, for they know not what they do; they would willingly come to you if they had but ears to hear your sweet voice, and eyes to see your mild beauty. I can see your holy face; its smile fills me with hope and comfort. I can hear your voice; it whispers, 'wait, wait but a little while, and you shall sink back into my faithful arms, back to eternal peace.'"

The rosy hues had vanished from the sky; gray twilight was spreading over the valleys, and the evening breeze began to whisper and to murmur in the tops of the pine-trees.

Oswald was seized with vague terror. He felt as if that mystical Night, which Berger had invoked in his strange prayer, was chilling him already with a breath from the grave--as if the sun had set never to rise again But this fear was not without a strange admixture of delight. The narcotic fragrance of thoughts of death which had been borne to him on Berger's ecstatic words, filled his heart, together with the perfume of the heather and the aroma of the pines.

He thought of Helen and of Melitta, but not with the restless anxiety of the morning, but in calm melancholy, as we think of the departed whom we have loved. He thought of the troubles and blunders of his gay drama in the château of Grenwitz, but it looked to him like a puppet-show for children. He thought of the future, but it had no longer any charms for him; it filled him neither with hope nor with fear; it was as if his whole life were withdrawing from without, as if the world were not worthy of so much love or so much hatred.

Thus he sat, resting his head on his hands, upon a large rock, and looked out into the evening, which was spreading its dark wings wider and wider over the heavens.

A hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Come!" said Berger, "let us return to the dead!"

They descended from the summit and plunged into the damp darkness of the forest. Berger seemed to know every path and every stone in the mountains. He went on, supporting himself every now and then with his stout cane, at a pace which made it difficult for Oswald to follow him, though he was considered a good pedestrian.

Thus they had reached a meadow lying in the very heart of the forest. As they followed the edge of the wood they suddenly saw a light glimmering on the opposite side. It came from the flame of a pile of briars which had just been kindled. Within the bright circle of the flames two persons were visible--a woman, as it seemed, and a child.

Oswald's sharp eyes confirmed him in a suspicion which had entered his heart at the first glance.

They were Xenobia and Czika.

He hastened as fast as he could across the meadow towards the fire, but he had hardly accomplished half the distance when he sank up to his ankles into the morass. He saw that he could not go any further. He cried as loud as he could: "Xenobia! Czika! it is I! Oswald!"

But his call had scarcely broken the peace of the silent forest when the fire vanished, and with the fire the two forms he had seen.

All was quiet--quiet as death. Oswald might have imagined that his fancy had played him a trick.

"What was the matter?" asked Berger, when Oswald joined him again.

"Did you not see the fire!"

"It was a will-o'-the-wisp in the swamp," replied Berger. "Let us go on."