"And now also I can speak freely of the time when I did not yet know you--for then my life was only apparent life and all I felt and thought was only a vague dreaming without connection and sense. I know that now--now since I have opened my eyes in the sunlight of your love, and life lies clear and transparent before me, so that the deep night which surrounds us looks to me brighter than formerly the brightest day. Now I can speak of the Melitta of former days as of a strange person for whose doings and sayings I am no longer responsible; now I can and will tell you what that portrait in my album means--that detached leaf which frightened you so, darling.--Yes, I saw it all; you changed color, and you did not comprehend how I could ask your opinion of a man whom you could not but think my lover. And yet Oldenburg never was my lover, or there must be strange degrees in love, of which the lowest is as far from the highest as the earth is from heaven.
"I knew Oldenburg from my childhood. My father's estate adjoined Cona, where you were yesterday. My aunt, who undertook my education after my mother's death, and Oldenburg's mother were warm friends, and met almost daily. So did we children. Oldenburg was several years older than I, but as girls are always ahead of boys in their development, we did not feel the difference in age much; we played and worked together; we were good comrades--ordinarily, for not unfrequently we fell out, and then we had sharp words and quarrels and tears. I rarely gave cause for them, for I was not obstinate, and always ready to give way, but Adalbert was excessively sensitive, stubborn, and self-willed. The double nature of his character, which he afterwards tried to harmonize and to conceal from all but the most sharp-sighted, was then very evident. It was impossible not to become interested in him, but I doubt if anybody really loved him. This he felt, and this feeling, which he bore about with him like a concealed wound, made him early a hypochondriac and a misanthrope. It was of little use to him that everybody admired his eminent talents, and that no one doubted his courage, his love of the truth--his stubborn, self-willed ways repelled all and offended all. Even his tall, ungraceful figure and his awkward motions contributed to turn the hearts of men away from him. At least it was so with me. I had from childhood up felt irresistibly attracted towards all that was beautiful and graceful, and had a real horror of what was ugly and ill-shapen. I could not love Adalbert, although he was sincerely attached to me with great tenderness, which he carefully hid under an appearance of coldness and rudeness. When his passionate temper got the better of his attempted calmness, he would even reproach me bitterly on account of my heartlessness and my fickleness.
"Such were our relations till Adalbert, at sixteen, went to college, for he had persuaded his guardian--his mother had also died in the mean time--to let him go to the city. Now he came but rarely to Cona, and then only for a few days. Then I was for two years at boarding-school. Thus it came about that we met only in passing, till he went to the University at Heidelberg. When he returned from there, and from a long journey, I had been married two years.
"He did not come to Berkow till a considerable time afterwards. Our meeting was strange enough. He seemed to accept the changed state of things only as a fait accompli, which we submit to because we cannot help ourselves. He did not trouble me with questions; he asked for no confidential communication, which the sole friend of my childhood and early youth might well have demanded. He did not reproach me; he did not tell me that he had loved me, that he had hoped to obtain my hand, although I afterwards learned that that had been so, and that the news of my marriage, which he received at Heidelberg, had nearly driven him mad, and laid him for weeks and months upon the sick-bed. He tried by silent observation to obtain a clear idea of my situation. I saw that nothing escaped him, that not a word I uttered, not a gesture I made remained unnoticed. This consciousness of being continually watched by such sharp eyes was by no means agreeable, especially as there was much that ought to have been very different from what it actually was. Soon we were as we had been in childhood; only there occurred no violent scenes, as our passions had subsided. As he then had brought me all the pretty shells, and stones, and flowers which he found on the beach, among the rocks, and in the garden, so he now told me all his indefatigably active mind could discover in the field of science: now a fine poem and now a deep thought--and he felt it not less deeply now, if I treated his treasures as carelessly as I had done with the flowers which I allowed to perish, and the stones and shells which I threw away. I knew I had no better friend than he, and he knew that in all I felt for him there was no love; all the more disinterested was his friendship, and all the more unwarrantable the fickleness with which I treated him.
"His friendship was soon to be proved. The melancholy into which Carlo had fallen, soon after Julius' birth, assumed a more and more dangerous form. Attacks of unexpected violence, the precursors of the last fearful catastrophe, became more frequent. He would now admit no one near him but Adalbert, although he, the bon-vivant of former days, had been in the habit of laughing ruthlessly at the baron, who was his junior, and yet thoughtful and melancholy himself. How often had he ridiculed him, how often called him contemptuously the Youth of Saïs! Now he accompanied him everywhere; now Oldenburg's voice was the only one which could drive away the dark demons that fought for his mind, at least for the moment. And the self-sacrificing spirit with which Oldenburg performed this service of love cannot be sufficiently praised, and I ought to thank him for it all my life long. Then came the catastrophe. Oldenburg stood faithfully by me in those dark days, or rather, he took all the burden and the responsibility upon himself, and managed all and everything with such energy and sagacity that I had only to consent.
"Carlo had been carried to an Asylum at the South, and I was left alone here at Berkow, devoting myself entirely to the education of my Julius, who was then five years old, and for whom I had secured Bemperlein as a teacher and a friend, thanks to Oldenburg's recommendation. The baron came less frequently than formerly, but still quite frequently, as I thought. It seemed to me that a tender note mingled at times with his friendship, and hardly had I noticed this than I thought it my duty to point out to him, as gently as I could, that his visits were probably too frequent. This was perhaps very ungrateful in me, but we women find it very difficult to be grateful to those whom we do not love.
"Next day Oldenburg had left the country. No one knew where he was. Somebody reported him, six months afterwards, in Paris; a year later he was seen in London. He was here, and there, and everywhere, carried about by his wild heart and his insatiable thirst for information.
"Thus four years had elapsed and little had changed in my position. I thought but rarely of Oldenburg; I had nearly forgotten him. I yielded then--now three years ago--to the persuasions of my cousin and his wife to accompany them on a trip to Italy. One evening as we were in the Coliseum Oldenburg suddenly stood before us. 'At last!' he said, pressing my hand. He pretended to have met us quite accidentally; but he confessed to me afterwards that he had heard in Paris, I know not from whom, of our proposed journey, that he had followed us from Munich and missed us everywhere, till at last he had overtaken us here. I must confess I was heartily glad to meet him, and was a little gratified to find that it was not quite accidental. Everything combined to give Oldenburg a good reception. We easily become attached even to strangers in travelling; how much more welcome is the friend of our youth whom we unexpectedly meet with abroad? Oldenburg had travelled all over Italy, and knew the painter of every altar-painting in every church and convent. His instructive conversation contrasted most markedly with the stupid talk of my relatives, and besides, Oldenburg had by this time polished off the rough edges of his character in the intercourse with good society. His manner was, in spite of his almost extreme abandon, as you now see it, thoroughly aristocratic. In a word, he now impressed me in a manner which I would have believed impossible before. It was not love that I felt for him, but it was more than the cool friendship which I had so far offered him alone. But, strange enough, the more I felt my secret antipathy, which I had cherished from early childhood, give way to an almost cordial attachment, the harsher and colder became his manner towards me. When we were all together, he addressed his conversation almost exclusively to my cousin, and treated me like a spoilt child, who is only indulged to keep it from crying. This offended my vanity; and this offended vanity, and the jealousy I began to feel of my cousin, made me try in good earnest to win Oldenburg's affection, which I feared I had lost by some unknown cause. This produced an entire revolution in Oldenburg's manner. He overwhelmed me with attentions; he seemed completely to forget Hortense, and whenever we were alone he exhibited a passion which first made me wonder and then frightened me. And yet he avoided any open declaration, and left me continually in doubt whether this was one of the mad freaks in which he still quite frequently indulged, or the expression of a deep-rooted attachment. It was impossible not to admire Oldenburg at that time. His genius unfolded its most brilliant powers. He was the soul of every society; they vied with each other who was to have him, and as he spoke French, English, Italian, and I know not how many languages, with fluency, every nation seemed to be willing to admit him as one of their own. And yet he made me the queen of every festivity, he compelled all to do homage to me; he displayed the treasures of his richly stored mind only to lay them at my feet;--what wonder that I could not long remain indifferent, and that I soon fancied I loved him? Without openly encouraging him, I let him go on, and permitted him, when we were alone, to treat me with the familiarity of our childish years; when we met in company, to show me all those attentions which we generally accept only from a declared lover."
"Hush, Melitta, I think I hear somebody in the garden."
"I heard nothing."