At last he found himself--he knew not how--before the garden-gate of Miss Bear's boarding-school. There was light in one of the windows--Helen's window. It was the first light he had seen for hours, and he felt as if a star was once more shining down into the night of his heart. Comfort and hope he knew that star could not bring him, but it softened his despair into sorrow. He glided into that humor in which man rises from the chaos of his own passions, looks full of painful pity at the careworn features of his genius, and feels the sorrows of the world in his own sorrow. He thought not of himself; he thought of the Son of Man, as he raised his voice, gathering his strength once more, and walking on the road towards town, and sang:
"Thy face, alas! so fair and dear,
I saw it in my dreams quite near.
It was so angel-like, so sweet,
And yet with pain and grief replete,
The lips alone, they are still red,
But soon they will be pale and dead."
CHAPTER VII.
A few days later a little company was assembled in the sitting-room of Privy Councillor Rohan's house. It consisted of the privy councillor himself, his daughter, Franz, and a young lady who had been brought there by Mr. Bemperlein: Mademoiselle Marguerite Martin. They had had supper, after waiting a whole hour for Mr. Bemperlein. Now they were sitting around the fire-place. Upon a table near Sophie, where usually the tea-things were placed, stood to-day a small tureen, from which the young lady filled at rare intervals one or the other's glass. The conversation was not particularly animated; a veil of melancholy seemed to hang over them all. No stranger would have guessed that this silent melancholy company was celebrating what is ordinarily looked upon as a festive occasion--the eve of the wedding-day.
And yet this was the case. To-morrow in the forenoon the young couple were to be married in the church of the university by Doctor Black, and then an hour later they were to leave for the capital, where Franz had important business.
For at the eleventh hour before the wedding a great change had taken place in the plans which Franz had formed for the future. The sacrifice which he had wished to make in all quietness and secret, for the peace and the happiness of the family, had not been accepted. When he wrote his friend in the capital that he was compelled to decline the offered place as assistant physician in the great hospital, he thought the matter was settled. But his friend was not the man to abandon so easily a plan to which he had become attached. He wrote again, and--Franz had not anticipated this--he wrote to his father-in-law also. Thus the privy councillor learnt what, according to Franz's plans, was to have remained a secret forever. He fell from the clouds; but his decision was formed instantly with all his former energy. When Franz called on him half an hour afterwards he received him with the letter in his hand. At this decisive moment Roban found himself once more in the possession of all his original strength of mind and eloquence.
"Do you not see, dearest Franz," he said, "that this enormous sacrifice, which you make for my sake with a light mind, and, like all men born of woman, with a heavy heart, overwhelms me by its greatness, and annihilates me, so to say, morally? You have sacrificed your fortune for me. I do not underrate that, I am sure; but many a father has done that cheerfully for his son, why should not for once a son do that for his father? But when you refuse this place you sacrifice something which can no longer be counted and valued. You sacrifice your whole future. You sacrifice the ambition that fills every noble, manly heart, to reach the highest degree of perfection in the profession to which it belongs; but more than that, you sacrifice also what you have no right to dispose of--your duty towards your fellow-men. To whom much is given, of him much is expected and much demanded. You will find in the great city a sphere of action such as a Cæsar would envy, if a Cæsar could ever comprehend in what the true control over men consists. You will be there, in reality, what the flatterers in Rome called a Nero and a Heliogabalus: decus et deliciolae generis humani--ornament and a delight of mankind; for you will make the blind see, the lame walk, and those who are buried under the burden of their sufferings rise from the death-bed. And pupils, filled with enthusiasm by your words and your works, will go forth to every land, and thus your usefulness will extend infinitely, as that of every truly good and great man is sure to extend. What you can do in Grunwald, others can do also. What you can do there, few others can do; and it is right and proper that every soldier in the great army of progress should march in his own appointed place in the ranks.
"And now, setting aside these inner and moral motives, which bind you to answer to your friend's summons with an obedient Here! the actual circumstances also are more in favor of the step than against it. I know very well what motives you had for your refusal, but--pardon me, Franz, if I speak candidly--have you not perhaps underrated my strength, even if you did not overestimate your own? I am what the world calls a candidate for death; death has marked me already as his own, in order to hit me all the more certainly the next time, but the next time need not come so very soon. If you do not object to it peremptorily, I estimate my probable life yet some four or five years, perhaps even longer. During that time I shall hold my lectures and visit my patients as before, and if I cannot do it all by myself I shall choose an assistant, who will not be so dangerous a rival as my excellent son-in-law whom they already begin to prefer to myself. Seriously Franz we are here in each other's way. And when the question is, after all, how to make money, why then it is better you go to the east and shear your sheep there, and I do my shearing in the west."
Franz was not quite convinced by these arguments, but he felt that the privy councillor could not well act differently as a man of honor. So he went to his betrothed and told her he had received an offer to go to the capital. What did she say to that?
"Whether you ought to accept the call," replied Sophie, after a short reflection, "that I must leave of course to you and to papa to decide; for I do not understand that. But if it must be done, I shall certainly not say No! When do we leave?"