STORY OF KRUSENSTERN AND AVENSLEBEN.
Freisleben.--Krusenstern, whose pale and wasted figure you now see passing silently about, was not always so. Once he was one of the handsomest students that the walls of Ruperto-Carolo ever enclosed. Every endowment that honours man, adorned him; that, even his envier must admit Nature had richly crowned him with her gifts; and the education he, sprung from one of the richest mercantile families of the city of N----, enjoyed, had brought those gifts to their highest perfection; but he had one shadow-side, and this was his choleric temperament; a failing sufficient to plunge him into ruin. Similar studies, similar sentiments united him in a strong bond of friendship with Von Avensleben, the only son of a house of ancient nobility. It was now in the year before his examination that he first saw and became acquainted with the sister of his friend; a most amiable lady, who then resided some time with her parents in the city of Heidelberg. His manly nature, free from all rudeness; his attractive demeanour, which a fine feeling of propriety pervaded; and his finished education, won him the heart of the damsel, and he testified to me that he had found in her that ideal which he had before continually sought in vain. I had the happiness to know the amiable family of the young lady, and recall with a melancholy joy the time which I spent amongst these good, and then so happy, people.
The widow Von Avensleben was as much distinguished for her high accomplishment as for her most unassuming disposition. She was well acquainted with the master works of German and foreign literature; and her knowledge of the world, and her nice tact, gave to her conversation a peculiar charm. She embraced her children in her innermost heart, her constant care was to smooth out every slightest trace of discord between them; and if she had a failing, it was her too great indulgence of them.
Amalia was the eldest daughter. She might be compared to one of those noble metals, which, because not vainly glittering on the surface, escape the eyes of ordinary men: but the noble ore conceals not its peculiar qualities from the knowing eye, which the more he observes, the more beautifully they discover themselves, and satisfy him that the pure metal requires no further refinement. In personal beauty inferior to her sister, the maiden had earlier advanced to a reflection upon herself and others, and her clear understanding enabled her to arrive at noble and free views of the true worth of outward things, and of her own mind. Thus she had early demonstrated that she was capable of the greatest sacrifices for her friends--for her friends, who were chosen after mature consideration, and in which choice womanly sagacity and fine feeling were her guides. Her youthful timidity gave place, as she first became conscious of her worth, to a noble assurance. She judged others with indulgence, but hesitated not to speak out what was an acknowledged truth, even when that truth was not flattering to another. Thus showed she herself constantly as a noble and true soul, which one must continue to love more and more.
The little Maria was not so circumspect as her sister. As a lovely butterfly, she fluttered from flower to flower, extracting from each the best honey. Her vivacity led her to embrace whatever was good and beautiful with heartiness; but exactly because every thing is not good and beautiful, was indispensable to her a change of the flowers from which she drew nourishment. She knew how to show herself friendly and full of kindness to all who felt themselves compelled to pay to her the tribute of her love-worthiness, without tyrannically abusing her magic wand. But, when she sometimes saw that the lovely and brilliant side of a thing had too much biassed her frequently too predominant feeling; when she found herself deceived in and discontented with what she had, in her too enthusiastic fancy, taken up, would she painfully lament over the dark side of life. Certainly, every one who had once seen the little elegant being, as she charmingly and sweetly moved in society; every one who had glanced on her fine and noble features, and into her speaking eyes, must have loved her; and when she, moreover, sung with the clear metal of her voice, one of the beautiful songs which my friend accompanied on the piano, every one was enchanted.
Thus were they happy people; and the rapidly approaching completion of his university life, his rare acquirements, and the protection of men high in the government, gave my friend the promise of a near and a yet happier future. Ah! who could have thought that the peace of this happy family should be so horribly destroyed; that this lovely bond should have been so cruelly rent asunder! An inconsiderate action of the young Von Avensleben converted this paradise into a hell.
He had accidentally received intelligence of a serenade which Krusenstern proposed to give to his loved one. This excited him to an ill-considered joke. As his friend glided near to the house with the nocturnal music, and standing near in the shade of another house, delighted himself with the imagination of the joy that his attention would give to Maria, Avensleben showed himself at the window, clad in a woman's night-dress, and threw a hand-kiss to Krusenstern. The wrath of Krusenstern at this foolish exposure of his lady to the ridicule of the musicians was furious, and a challenge to a duel with pistols was the consequence. No representations were able to bring him from this terrible resolve; and a journey which the family of Von Avensleben made, in order to spend a few days on a neighbouring estate of theirs, afforded the sundered friends an opportunity to compass their unhappy intention.
They drew in the early morning to the appointed place. Krusenstern with his seconds was first there--a spot well known to travellers by the name of the Engelswiese, or Angel's Meadow, lying up in the woods above the Neckar, on the opposite side to the city, and showing its pleasant green area belted in by the forest, to wanderers about the castle, though invisible to the valley below. He walked in silence to and fro, and gazed down upon the city, which lay gloriously illuminated by the morning sun. He could even distinguish the house where he had enjoyed the purest and deepest pleasures; he thought over the happy past; and anxious forebodings of a dark and perdition-blasted future rose up before him. The curtain was only too soon to be drawn aside, which his eyes were not yet permitted to penetrate. His antagonist appeared on the ground; the old resentment drove out every softer emotion; the seconds measured out the distance, the pistols were loaded, the word given--Von Krusenstern shot--but it became night before his eyes, as in the same moment he saw his antagonist spring on high, and then fall to the ground. He had received his death-wound.
Who shall describe the situation in which poor Krusenstern found himself!--who the misery of the friends of both! He was immovable to all persuasions to flight, and was committed by the magistrate to whom he had surrendered himself of his own accord, to the university prison until further inquiry.
The family of the fallen youth were immediately written to, to tell them, that, on account of some degree of indisposition, he would not be able immediately to follow them, as had been agreed, and a friend of the house undertook the sorrowful task of opening to them the dreadful intelligence. But the most terrible part was yet to come. Von Avensleben was highly beloved amongst the students, and it was resolved to attend his funeral with a torch-train; and that the wretched prisoner, who, during all this time had sate brooding in a stupor of grief without listening to any one, might not perceive it, they determined that the funeral should take place a day earlier than usual. I was with the unhappy man on this eventful evening, endeavouring to comfort him, and to withdraw his thoughts from the dark pictures of his imagination. The shutters of the little room were closed, but a tone of the dismal mourning music struck his ear as the funeral train passed by the end of the street, along the Hauptstrasse, or High Street, of the city. "My friend! they bear him to the grave!" cried he with a terrible voice, and rushed to the window. I endeavoured to hold him back, but he tore himself loose from my grasp with giant strength, and bursting open the shutters struck his head against the iron grating. There flared the sullen glow of the torches, and the tone of the trumpets quivered through my vitals. With ghostlike, terrible, and distorted countenance, he gazed after the melancholy train;--"I--I have murdered him! the good, the true friend! There! I see him with the bleeding wound, crying, 'Wo!' over me! Oh God! Oh God! thou has cast me off! Maria! Maria! what have I done to thee! Seize me, ye spirits of hell! Tear me away from the pure angel-form!" So he raved on, till, exhausted, he fell back into the chamber.
He passed the night in the most horrible delirium; and for many days it was not dared to leave him a moment alone, lest he should effect his desperate endeavours at self-destruction.
But if the train left horrors behind it, it met yet still greater as it approached the end of the city. The letter had reached the family of Von Avensleben, but the friend had missed the sisters in the darkness of the night, as they hastened back to town to attend their sick brother.
"Whom do they bury there?" asked the trembling Maria, as their carriage, passing in at the Mannheim gate, was detained by the mourning procession.
"The student who was shot in the duel," answered an old man, who did not know the young lady--"the Herr Von Avensleben."
The cry of horror and misery in the carriage, as it wheeling round again rolled away through the dark night, I attempt not to describe. Maria only too soon became aware of the whole terrible secret. She fell into a long and severe nervous fever, and only arose from her sick bed to die a more weary death from the sure poison of incurable sorrow. She had written to her former lover a most moving letter, which assured him of her pardon, and in which she exhorted him to listen to the consolations of religion.
The kind girl had not desired the return of the little admonitory tokens of happy days; she had also retained his gifts, memorials of a pure and beautiful love, which a dreadful fate had destroyed.
Krusenstern, who spent two years in prison, is now come back again, and--you have seen him.
All had listened in silence to the recital. Of some of them, the pipes were gone out,--others blew powerfully clouds of smoke around them.
"Poor Krusenstern!" said Eckhard. "I revoke all that I have said against him."
"A most sorrowful history," said the Englishman.
"And false notions about women is the cause of all," said Von Kronen. "The poor Krusenstern would never have gone so far if he had not regarded his love in too romantic a light. This mischief would never have happened if he had only read my favourite author, Lichtenberg, where he says,--'That the irresistible power of love can raise us, through its object, to the highest pitch of happiness, or plunge us down to the lowest gulf of misery, is poetical nonsense of young people, whose heads are yet only growing; which have no voices in the counsels of men; and for the most part are so constructed that they are never likely to have any.'"
"We must have no more such stories," said Hoffmann, "or the pleasures of the whole evening will be destroyed. The tea is ready; take your places, gentlemen."
Mr. Traveller, tasting the tea, pronounced it capital; and declared his astonishment that the Frau Philistine could prepare so excellent a beverage; but the host gave him to understand that he had brewed it himself. "It is my favourite beverage," said he, "and when I spend the evening at home, serves me for supper; or I cook a beefsteak and potatoes in the little machine which stands yonder, and which is a good deal in vogue amongst the students."
"So, so!" said the Englishman, "that is very sensible now."
While they thus chatted, the House-besom entered, and set upon the table a handsomely-shaped tart, which is called in this part of the country, a Radonen-cake, as a gift from Herr Schütz, in whose house Hoffmann was familiar. The cake was admired, and the host addressed himself to cut it up scientifically, when--zounds! the whole cake was nothing but a snow-ball, which had been made in a proper mould, and which had received the requisite colour from an ingenious powdering with brick-dust. "So shalt thou return to the water out of which thou wert made," exclaimed Hoffmann, as the whole company laughed heartily at the deception.
When tea was over, the company divided itself. The Englishman and Von Kronen plunged deep into a game at chess. The other four played at whist, and Hoffmann, as master of the house, did the honours, wandering first to this and then to that table. The whist party continued long; after the first rubber they obliged the host to join then, and so spun out their play to the fifth rubber. In the meantime the two others had terminated their game at chess, and seated themselves by the stove, smoking their pipes, and chatting over this and that.
"Has your pipe a good chair-way?" asked the Englishman, whom this student expression amused.
"It goes like a flute," answered the other. "Why you have made yourself master of the art of smoking, even to its very technical terms."
"You can scarcely believe," said Mr. Traveller, "how much I am interested in every thing, that is German, of which smoking is one thing, and especially in all that is connected with its university system. So long as I continued in England, I did not trouble myself much on this head, but now I use all the endeavours I can to acquaint myself with the present constitution of your universities. You must recommend to me a book in which I can find some notice of the origin of universities in general, and of the earlier fortunes of that of Heidelberg in particular."
"The best book on that subject," said Enderlin, who had come from the whist-table, "is Von Kronen himself. He can give you such a lecture upon it, that all the rats in the house shall run out; for which reason they wished to appoint him, in Westphalia, to the office of chamber-hunter. Tres faciunt collegium, so let us erect him a cathedra, whence he may pronounce his lecture."
These arrangements were speedily made. In the meantime Von Kronen had put his visage into a very learned form, and begun:--