VI.
Thanks to his good courser, Baron Durer, the Minister, got home in safety to his château. The first person that he met was the baroness. He turned abruptly away from her.
"Whither are you hurrying so fast, my dear baron?" said she, seeing her husband running away from her, which was not his custom, for he was fond of his wife.
"Baron!" was his reply; "to what baron were you calling? I am no baron, madame—though one day, perhaps, I may be. Let us hope I may."
The tone in which he spoke these words terrified the baroness. Her husband immediately afterward left the château, and began running as fast as his legs could carry him, neither stopping nor slackening his pace. His head was bent down, like the head of a miser who is seeking about everywhere for the treasure which some one has stolen from him. From that day forward his face assumed a gloomy expression, his color became sallow, his eye haggard; and he began bitterly to complain that heaven had thought fit to send him on earth in a shepherd's form and a shepherd's dress.
Some days later, a messenger from the Emperor's court arrived at the château: "May it please my lord Minister," he began—
"I am no Minister," replied Durer, impatiently; "but have patience, sir, have patience; I may be Minister one day." Then he began to walk up and down hastily in the gallery of the château, perpetually saying, "I might have been a Minister by this time, sir, if your great ones did not leave men of strong intellect, and ability, and purpose, in the jaws of a misery which eats away the very brain as rust eats away the steel. Why—why, I ask, debar these men from high offices—these men who have nothing—merely out of a prejudice, which is as fatal to the individual as it is deadly to the state?" Then turning sharply on the Emperor's emissary, "Go, and tell your master, sir," said he, "that yesterday I was—I was—I was"—pressing his hand, as he spoke, above his forehead, as though he was trying to find a coronet which had belonged to it. Then rushing away distractedly—"Minister!" cried he, "I am—I was—No, no—I was not—but I soon will be!—Leave me, sir! leave me! leave me!"
Another day, his wretched family, who watched him with terror, overheard him talking to his gardener: "What a magnificent piece of work you are laying out, my good boy," said Durer; "a garden admirably designed, if there ever was such a thing." Then casting a disturbed glance toward the château, "'Tis a grand place, this," said he; "rich and elegant, and capitally situated—to whom does it belong, Joseph?"
"My lord baron knows right well that park, gardens, and château, belong to his noble self," said the gardener, leaning on his spade, and raising his cap.
Durer began to laugh to himself—but it was a piteous laugh—"Belong to me, my good boy!" said he; "not yet—not yet—and yet it seems to me as if I had owned—as if I had owned"—and he passed his hand over his forehead, as if he could call back some recollection which had drifted away out of his reach—murmuring, after a pause, "Is it to be this shepherd's hovel—for ever?—for ever?—for ever?" He fell on a turf seat, sobbing bitterly; then raising his head, he saw his two fair little children, who were at play in one of the alleys of the park.
"What lovely children!" sighed he; "ah!—he must, at least, be happy, whoever he be, that is father to such a pair of angels!"
The children came and flung themselves, laughing, into the Minister's arms, and hung about him with all manner of tender caresses. In return, he could but press their tiny hands in his, or let his lean, feverish fingers play with their golden curls. They kept calling him "Father."
"What are they saying!" murmured the Baron; "the blessing of being called father I shall never know! What is life—without a home, without a family round me! But these gifts only belong to fortune, and come with it." Then looking from one lovely little creature to another, with his dim and bloodshot eyes, he said, "And yet these children—these children—" He could not finish his sentence, but again passed his hand over his forehead; and the children became silent and awe-stricken, for they saw that he was weeping to himself.
Not long after this, he ceased to know his wife, whom he called for without ceasing; then he would bury himself deep in reading, without recollecting a word of what he had read when he had ended. All that was left to him was the memory of his young desires; the power of retaining anything had passed away utterly. His ardor began to change into frenzy; he was devoured with fever, and haunted with dream after dream that tempted him to pursue them, and mocked him at the very moment when he thought that he had reached them. The struggle wore him out, life and limb. He was seen day by day to wither, and grow weaker. The end was not far. On the last day of his illness, a strange fancy seized him: he would get up—rushed out of the château, and began to run wildly across the country, as if he were chasing something before him that no one, save himself could see. "Sire!" cried he, hoarsely, "deliver me from the obscurity of this shepherd's life! Sire! do listen to me! I am John Durer! I have studied everything! I have learned everything! I have fathomed everything! Raise me from my lowly condition, sire! Who knows? one day you may have no one among your servants more devoted, more enlightened, than your poor John Durer!"
The thing that he pursued, fled—fled. Durer ran after it more wildly as he grew weaker, trying to raise his voice higher and higher, and stretching out his arms more and more eagerly. They were now at the Valley of Bushes. "Sire!" cried he once again.
"John Durer, scholar, of the village near Haerlem," replied a voice from the shadows of the wood, "his Majesty the Emperor does not love people who have lost their memory."
The whole past—the long, long, years of his ambitious and glorious and ungrateful life—seemed in one instant to come back, as in a flash of lightning, before the weary, distracted man; and with this, too, the consciousness of his present state. He uttered one terrible cry, and fell down dead.