THE MARCH TO CALVARY.
I.
Even the wisest often fail to realize that one cannot escape one’s shadow. Albert Zorn imagined that ennui was in Berlin but it was only in his own soul.
He found Goettingen as depressing as before. The college town was covered with snow, the students seemed grim and serious, the professors cold, and he found but few of his old friends. He arrived here as a prodigal son, misgivings in his heart. He recalled the Abschiedskarten he had sent to the members of the faculty a few years before, after his suspension. He now realized that the mockery, witty as it might have been, that those Abschiedskarten contained had not endeared him to his old instructors. And the students seemed so sulky. Prussian tyranny had conquered and killed every manifestation of free speech. The Burschenschaft and the Turngemeinde—the two most significant fraternities—were but names. The students not only feared their own utterances but even the unguarded speech of their friends. And they had not forgotten Albert’s unguarded tongue.
But while the dullness of the place depressed him he welcomed the quiet of his lodging house on the Rothenstrasse. He gave himself to the study of the law, and “corpus juris” was his “pillow”. He had no difficulty in hushing the muse’s voice, for the muse sang not. For a time he passed a prosaic existence, and while he frequently shuddered at the thought he again wondered if his light had not burned out. His verses scarcely stirred in him more than memories. And when he made attempts at writing he was conscious of the effort, of the lack of spontaneity, and dropped it. Was he a Samson with his locks shorn? He stirred and often went to the Rathskeller to drown his sorrow, but unable to bear drink he turned to the library.
Soon March drew to an end, the winter was gone, the thawing season began. Everything within him was thawing, too. His blood suddenly began to course warmer; there was agitation in his breast; his nerves seemed on fire. A chance acquaintanceship had inspired him to write a few lyric stanzas. He laughed like a mocking satan. Indeed his light had not yet burned out! It had just commenced to burn and would soon redden the sky with its rising flames. Let his enemies in Berlin and Hamburg sneer! What did he care? He had nothing but contempt for the multitude anyhow. They should see! He flung the law books aside and took up an unfinished poem. Byron’s recent death stimulated his energies. Byron was the only man to whom he felt a close kinship, and the poet’s death affected him deeply. He must take Byron’s place; he would be Germany’s Byron.
Spurred by these thoughts and feelings his dullness fled; his imagination was again volatile; his tongue was once more caustic. He was again seen in the beer cellars, arguing, jesting, making sport in his whimsical manner. The students again gathered around him and goaded him on to saying bitter things about their professors, their pedantic colleagues, the Prussian officials. He had the gift of caricature in words. He became his old self again. He was the very life of all student affairs, and at their frequent duels he was either a second or umpire. He was a Byron with a vengeance. He once more took up fencing and fought a duel or two.
Ah! they should see—his enemies at Berlin and Hamburg. They might call him a Jew, but what of that? He became heroic. Race pride swelled in his breast. He was of the race “of which Gods are kneaded”, of the race that needed no apologies, even in his day. Who was there in Germany to take the place of the great who had passed? The Teuton gods were dead! Lessing was gone, so was Schiller, and Goethe, like King David in his old age, “got no heat”; this old Jupiter was no more hurling thunderbolts; his arm was even too feeble to fling pebbles. Who were to take the places of these gods? A number of Schmetterlinge—mere butterflies—waving their colorful wings in the sunshine and hovering around the blossoming shrubs, with an old bumble bee here and there, without sting, without honey, buzzing around a rosebush. Yes, who were to take the place of the dead heroes? Who was to take Goethe’s place? His blood warmed at the thought. The mantle of this great bard must fall on his own shoulders. Nay more, he would undo many of the things the great Romanticist had done. He would be to his generation what Goethe had been to his. Indeed, he would even go farther than Goethe. Goethe was self-centered, content with his own pleasure, playing with the beautiful thoughts as a juggler plays with balls, but he would give his life and genius to Germany. Goethe never loved the Germans, he mused, but he would liberate the Teutonic mind from its self-imposed imprisonment. Ay, indeed, he would wield a weapon mightier than the sword in the cause of liberty! Let his enemies rave——
But with Albert Zorn there was even less than a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. The next moment he laughed at his own heroics. He understood the heroics of those that smarted under the whips of injustice. The irony of his own situation struck him forcibly. He was humorous and great enough to laugh at himself. Did he not feel a secret pride when his admirers told him that there was not a trace of the Semite in his face; that his nose, though longish, was Grecian? No, Albert could not deceive himself. He saw the tragi-comedy of it all. To be heroic in one’s thoughts was one thing and to be heroic in one’s actions quite a different matter.
But here at Goettingen his fellow-students never reminded him of his birth, and even the professors had accepted the prodigal son rather graciously. And he had a circle of admirers among the literary guild. To be sure, there was petty jealousy among them, but they did not disturb him. Talent must expect jealousy, he reflected soothingly; only the feeble and the dead arouse no jealousy.